Ag-to-urban bill wouldn't have saved water in Pinal County, state says (2024)

It’s well accepted that houses usually consume less water than farms. But legislation that would have accelerated the paving of farmland for subdivisions from Phoenix south to Tucson actually could have boosted water use in some instances, a state analysis found.

The analysis showed the legislation would have created possibly significant water savings in the Phoenix area. But in several scenarios for Pinal County, it would have meant increases in total water use of up to 20% annually, the Arizona Department of Water Resources concluded.

Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the bill last week. The newly released analysis appears to have been an underlying cause of her veto, although her veto message didn’t mention it specifically.

The bill’s supporters now complain that ADWR’s analysis is flawed, while others say it’s time for all sides to figure out a solution that is more likely to reduce water use.

ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke told a meeting of the Governor’s Water Policy Council last week that the idea of converting farms to subdivisions has merit, but “we have to get the numbers right.”

“I think there’s more work to be done here. With transparency and inclusiveness we can get there at some point in the near future,” he said at the June 18 meeting.

But as the vetoed bill stood, “For Pinal, it’s unclear at best and cause for concern” as to whether it would actually save water, said ADWR official Natalie Mast, one of the agency’s lead researchers on the analysis. “It will require some additional work and additional analysis to have that confidence for Pinal.”

Farms reducing pumping

A key reason for the increases projected for Pinal County’s water use is that the analysis took into account the likelihood that many farms would either reduce or eliminate pumping on their own, naturally, had this bill never passed, Mast said. That could happen either because farms could be converted to industrial use or would go fallow for some years.

Pinal County and the Phoenix area still have hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland remaining even after hundreds of thousands more acres have been paved over for development since World War II.

“That is really the driving factor here — the natural agricultural decline where we can’t necessary assume farms’ water use is a flat line in future,” said Mast, director of ADWR’s Active Management Area program.

“When we look at it as a declining (ag water use) rate, and compare that with what municipal water uses will be, the numbers (for water savings) tend to go into the negative.”

The water use increases in Pinal projected by the new analysis ranged from 11,000 acre-feet a year to 155,000 acre-feet annually — or about 1.5% to 20% of the total used there in 2021— over 100 years.

The varied estimates were based on different assumptions about the amount of farmland that would be retired naturally without passage of the state law, the impact of replenishment of groundwater supplies to compensate for water pumping, and future population projections for those areas.

ADWR publicly released the analysis the day before Hobbs vetoed the bill June 19.

The bill would have allowed subdividers in the Phoenix, Pinal, Tucson and Prescott areas to meet state water laws requiring assured, 100-year supplies for new developments by buying and retiring farmland for its historic water rights. Developers of farmland could then start work on subdivisions now stalled by past ADWR decisions to stop issuing certificates of assured water supply for new subdivisions that rely on groundwater.

It cleared the Legislature on June 15, its last day in session, with strong support from developers and homebuilders and equally vocal opposition from environmentalists.

‘Exhaustion and frustration’

The new ADWR analysis triggered expressions of disbelief from two attorneys representing developers who pushed for the bill — Rob Anderson and Alexandra Arboleda.

“We’re at a point of exhaustion and frustration, seeing all these statistics now,” said Anderson, whose firm represents several major Buckeye developers of huge projects now stalled due to ADWR’s decision blocking new subdivision approvals based on groundwater.

He told the water policy council, “We don’t think it’s that complicated. If if you urbanize you reduce water use. It’s a positive water policy that will improve that future.”

“What we’re trying to do is build single-family, owner-occupied housing. Is this is a good idea? It is a good idea. We seem to be getting lost in the details.”

In an email to the Star, Arboleda, who helped draft the vetoed bill, said, “On first impression, the department’s conclusion that replacement of high intensity irrigation uses with low intensity urban uses, which result in new wastewater return flows that can be reused or recharged, will result in less water savings than the status quo ... seems to defy logic.

“Continued pumping for irrigated agriculture will certainly drain the aquifer faster than most other uses,” she wrote.

‘The right numbers’

But ADWR Director Buschatzke told the water policy council that the analysis’ results could have been worse. The analysis had assumed that developers would get rights to 1.5 acre-feet per acre of water on converted farmland, but the bill would have allowed up to 2 acre-feet.

If ADWR had used 2 acre-feet, “those numbers would be way more red than they are now,” Buschatzke said. “The right numbers are the right numbers.”

He was referring to the red color on ADWR’s slide presentation that indicated there would be more, not less, water use, on subdivided farmland in Pinal County under the proposed bill.

An opponent of the vetoed bill, water researcher and former ADWR Director Kathleen Ferris, praised the agency’s analysis.

The purpose of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, which contains the assured water supply requirement, was not to get rid of farming or to convert farmland to urban uses — “it was to control overpumping of groundwater, to stop groundwater mining,” Ferris said at the water policy council meeting.

Hobbs’ veto message said it’s clear the data on water savings “does not support universal adoption of this program.”

Now, “more time is needed to develop this concept in collaboration with stakeholders and lawmakers to ensure the legislation is crafted appropriately,” Hobbs wrote.

At the request of developers and legislators supporting the bill, ADWR’s analysis took into account savings that would be realized by the replenishment of groundwater for all new developments by renewable Colorado River water, to compensate for the pumping. But the analysis concluded the water savings would be less or the water usage would be greater if replenishment was considered than if it wasn’t.

Arboleda questioned that finding and noted that the bill’s drafters had agreed to add a replenishment requirement only after ADWR officials and the governor’s office asked that it be added.

‘Fair and even-handed’

The reason that considering replenishment increased total water use is that at the same time ADWR was tallying that benefit to the aquifer, the agency also had to take into account “incidental recharge” of groundwater from farm runoff onto crops “to be fair and even-handed,” Mast said.

“If you think about the plus side of the municipal portion, you also have to think about the plus side for agriculture,” she said.

Arboleda also asked why the analysis didn’t consider any groundwater savings from the reuse of treated wastewater produced by new developments on retired farmland.

One reason is that in a lot of cases with new developments, “their actual effluent production may be less than forecasted,” Mast said. Generally, the amount of effluent produced by a single subdivision can vary widely, depending on how much water a subdivision uses indoors versus outdoors, she said.

Arboleda also noted that an earlier state analysis — circulated by Hobbs’ office — found the bill would result in water savings, and that the department’s latest findings haven’t been peer-reviewed

Ferris, however, grilled ADWR on why the analysis hadn’t been publicly released until after the Legislature passed the bill. Several people on both sides of the issue had discussed the ADWR analysis during the legislative session’s closing weeks but ADWR hadn’t discussed it publicly then and didn’t respond to a public records request from the Star for slides about the analysis.

“I have a lot of frustration” that the bill reached the governor’s desk without this analysis being made available to the governor’s water council and the public at large, Ferris said.

ADWR referred the Star’s inquiry about why the analysis hadn’t been released sooner to the governor’s office. Hobbs’ press secretary Christian Slater didn’t respond.

Summing up the situation, water policy council member Sandy Fabritz said, “Rather than focusing on what doesn’t work, can we please run some numbers on something that will work, so there is a path forward for folks?”