Author: azwater

Massive earth fissure found near Picacho Peak…and you heard about if first from Arizona Water News!

On By azwater

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Spectacular drone video shot by Arizona Geological Survey of new fissure sparks wave of media attention

Arizona news media are buzzing suddenly with the release of some spectacular video of a new, expanding earth fissure in the desert near Picacho Peak.

Shot by geoscientist Brian Gootee of the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS), the drone video depicts a classic aerial shot of the 1.8-mile long fissure before zooming down below the ground-level rim, providing some sensational inside views of the earthly phenomenon.

The video can be viewed here, here, here, here and here. And, notably, here.

The fissure, located about ten miles southwest of Picacho Peak State Park in southern Pinal County, is the latest fissure discovered in an area of the desert where they are becoming plentiful. In places, the nearly two-mile-long fissure is up to ten feet wide and 30 feet deep.

 

Sending in a drone to examine the earth fissure

Fissures can pose a hazard to hikers and people riding off-road vehicles in the area. Cattle grazing in the area also are in jeopardy of falling into some of the larger fissures.

Fissures also tend to erode quickly, especially during torrential rains, and can act as a conduit for storm runoff into the area’s underground aquifers.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources Land Subsidence Monitoring Report No. 3, which the department featured in the January 12 issue of Arizona Water News, identified numerous fissures in southern Pinal County, including one north of the Picacho Mountains.

The large earth-crack depicted in the video is oriented roughly north and south. It appears to have begun forming between March 2013 and December 2014, according to the AZGS geoscientists who first examined the fissure.

The newer part of the Picacho fissure — much of which the drone traverses at below-the-rim levels — appears to have formed within the last six months, judging by the lack of erosion around its rims, as well as a lack of vegetation.

“The earth fissures are a result of land subsidence which is caused by excessive groundwater use,” said Brian Conway, supervisor for the Water Resources Geophysics/Surveying Unit. Conway worked closely with the AZGS geoscientists in preparing the department’s subsidence report.

An uprooted tree

“This earth fissure was an extension of an earth fissure that was discovered using 2014 imagery by Joe Cook at the AZGS,” said Conway.

“This was Joe Cook’s first chance to visit the earth fissure and discover the newer extension of the earth fissure.”

According to Conway, AZGS researchers never before have used drone-video technology while mapping out an earth fissure.

Water Resources cooperates closely with AZGS in investigating and monitoring earth fissures and land subsidence. Much of their work is mapped out using a revolutionary satellite-based radar technology known as InSAR.

Modern technology clearly changes our understanding of earth-bound phenomena like fissures by giving us perspectives we didn’t have previously.

Camera-carrying drones, for example, allow us to examine the fresh walls of earth fissures as if we were hiking through a Colorado Plateau slot canyon.

“Perspective” works in both directions. Just as a drone can descend below the rim of a new fissure, satellite-based photo technology literally can lift a viewer’s perspective off the planet’s surface. Click on this satellite image

“Perspective” works in both directions. Just as a drone can descend below the rim of a new fissure, satellite-based photo technology literally can lift a viewer’s perspective off the planet’s surface. Click on this satellite image of the Picacho fissure, in an image created circa 2014, and roll your mouse wheel as far back as it will go. Talk about a unique, out-of-this-world perspective!

 

 

 

The Great California Drought: Is it over? Well, yes. And no.

On By azwater

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In California, the weather is being described in words and phrases that are foreign to many of us.

“Atmospheric rivers?” Really? Whatever those are, they sound really… wet.

And they are. The moisture-laden atmospheric phenomena are delivering snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains that around the New Year came down in double-digit feet. Areas north of San Francisco that only months ago sweated out the danger of widespread wildfire – breathe deep, Sonoma County! – now are drenched and enduring widespread… floods. It’s wet out there.

But is it really the end of the “D” word? Is the Great California Drought really done?

In fact, it is. And… it is not. California is a big state. Some regions in northern California that seemed to be tip-toing toward the wetter edge of drought last winter now have raced free.

But it is still weather we are discussing. However breath-taking their accumulations, rain and snow are still just that. Rain and snow, coming down over the course of days and weeks.

Drought, on the other hand, is more a function of climate. It is a condition afflicting California for the last five years, overall, and Arizona for the last 16 plus years. It takes more than precipitation – even enormous atmospheric rivers of precipitation – to break free of drought. It takes time.

Still, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or, NOAA), northern California now is officially drought-free for the first time in over four years, thanks to the astonishing – and on-going – drenching that began there in October.

For the first time since early 2013, less than 60 percent of the Golden State is locked in drought. At this time last year, according to NOAA’s weekly drought monitor, 97 percent of California was in a state of drought.

For southern California (and, ahem, their neighbors to the east), the news is less celebratory. The drought continues.

In a statement released in late December, for example, the Coachella Valley Water District — water provider for urban and agricultural users covering 1,000 square miles, from the San Gorgonio Pass to the Salton Sea – said water agencies could expect deliveries that were 45 percent of their full allocation from the State Water Project. The district did acknowledge, however, that if precipitation continued to fall in the north, deliveries could be bolstered.

Arizona Department of Water Resources climate analyst Don Gross said he expects the California Department of Water Resources will increase that allocation even further, given the continuing levels of precipitation.

As Arizonans well know (there are Arizona teenagers driving cars now who have never known their home state to be out of drought) there is drought. And, then, there is drought. Even though southern California remains drought-plagued, conditions are improving there, too.

As reported by NOAA, just two percent of southern California – mostly in Ventura County – remains in “exceptional” drought. But almost half the state, including the Coachella Valley, remains in “severe drought,” which is the third-worst stage of drought.

“I would expect that the next Drought Monitor will show additional lessening of the drought intensity classifications,” added Water Resources’ Don Gross.

The paradox of experiencing record precipitation in some regions combined with official reports of continuing “exceptional” and “severe” drought is causing real confusion on the West Coast.

The Marin County Independent Journal, for example, reported recently that the area was experiencing record rains, but that the drought was continuing. The newspaper’s headline: “Marin on pace for record rains, but state says drought still on.”

That paradox flustered the general manager of the North Marin Water District, who told the Independent Journal: “Our region is not in a drought, and if the (state) regulation remains in effect, it is the wettest drought ever.”

 

Ebbing Away: Latest land “subsidence” monitoring report finds lower ground levels and fissures in some regions of Arizona

On By azwater

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The problem of land subsidence in Arizona – the lowering in elevation of land-surface levels, largely the result of groundwater extraction – is a decidedly mixed bag, the Arizona Department of Water Resources is discovering.

Thanks to decreased groundwater pumping in the Phoenix and Tucson Active Management Areas, for example, subsidence rates in many areas of those AMAs have decreased between 25 and 90 percent compared to rates in the 1990s.

That is just one of the major findings of the department’s recent “Land Subsidence Monitoring Report No. 3,” released earlier this month.

And it’s the news from the happy side of the bag.

On the opposite side, land subsidence statewide is proving to be an increasingly serious challenge that is causing problems for infrastructure in some areas. And it is proving to be a headache even in certain parts of active-management areas.

 

Monitoring for subsidence

 

As the report describes, Water Resources first began monitoring for subsidence in the eastern areas of the Valley and around Luke Air Force Base in the west after numerous “non-exempt” wells – that is, wells that draw up groundwater at rates faster than 35 gallons per minute – were installed starting in 1997.

Historically, land levels in those areas have dropped at significant rates, the recent report finds.

The problems caused by land subsidence do not go away simply by fixing cracked foundations, reconnecting broken pipelines or repairing roadways.

Subsidence is caused by the collapse of open-pore spaces in subsurface aquifers, an unseen water-storage catastrophe in the making. When the open-pore spaces of aquifers fully collapse, they collapse permanently, in most cases.

“Land subsidence is a regional problem for some groundwater basins in the state and may continue to be an ongoing problem,” said Brian Conway, who prepared the report on behalf of Water Resources.

 

Arizona Department of Water Resources’s Brian Conway, Supervisor for the Geophysics/Surveying Unit

“Even if sustainable, safe-yield groundwater withdrawal occurred, residual land subsidence would continue until the groundwater levels recover — and/or the open pore-spaces in the sub-surface fully collapse.”

As one would expect, the Water Resources report finds that subsidence is most active in regions outside the active-management areas – that is, in areas where groundwater pumping is unregulated.

Land subsidence has resulted in more than 160 miles of earth fissures. The Arizona Geological Survey maps all the earth fissures throughout the state. The Geological Survey analysts provide Water Resources with the data from their research.

The Geological Survey and Water Resources analysts have found that the Willcox Groundwater Basin in southeastern Arizona is the most active area for forming new earth fissures.

Southeastern Arizona is one of the regions most severely impacted by drought. The area also has seen substantial increases in farming operations that rely on mined groundwater.

 

Earth Fissure

 

The Willcox Basin is outside the reach of the state’s Groundwater Management Act of 1980, which regulates groundwater extraction in active-management areas. According to the report, new earth fissures in the area are impacting roads, highways, power lines and a pipeline.

The report observes that other non-AMA regions of the state also have seen considerable increases in their rates of earth subsidence, notably parts of the McMullen Valley Basin and the San Simon Valley Sub-basin. Both of those regions have seen increased agriculture activity in recent years that is reliant on mined groundwater

The subsidence mapping process employs the latest radar technology — known as “InSAR,” or satellite-based synthetic aperture radar.

The introduction of the InSAR technology has proved to be a game-changer in terms of the state’s ability to accurately track the development of subsidence over time.

Water Resources was awarded a $1.3 million grant from NASA in 2002 that kicked off a three-year effort to integrate the InSAR system into Arizona’s subsidence-monitoring programs.

The program now has 14 different partners in the effort whose financial support allows the department to fund the InSAR data collection.

The side-looking, self-illuminating, radar-imaging system has helped Water Resources develop an extensive library of scenes, covering an area greater than 150,000 square miles.

With the InSAR data, Water Resources has identified more than 26 individual land subsidence features around the state, collectively covering more than 3,400 square miles.

“The InSAR data is a huge part of our monitoring efforts now,” said Conway.

“We are able to cover large areas with the data and are able to see millimeter changes of deformation at a very high resolution.”

Busy water author explains water “collaboration” in the Southwest

On By azwater

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And just who is the busiest water writer out there?

Not much argument that it’s John Fleck, longtime author of an authoritative blog on water in the Southwest ( http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/ ), former water reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, and author of an influential new book on water in the arid West, Water is for Fighting Over and Other Myths about Water in the West.

None of those credentials, however, are evidence of Fleck’s breakneck schedule in recent months.

In August, Fleck was named director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources program. He already had served at UNM as a professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance.

In December, Fleck served on a panel titled “communicating the drought” at the Colorado River Water Users Association meetings in Las Vegas.

Now, he’s in Tempe, where he spoke at an event organized by a trio of Arizona State University-affiliated organizations about the need to nurture collaborative water governance in response to increasing drought-driven scarcity.

“We have this ‘myth’ of water being anchored in conflict, wealth and power (in the West),” said Fleck to an audience of about 35 at the Brickyard Orchid House near ASU’s Tempe campus.

“And that myth just hasn’t played out in the last century.” Rather, he said, regional collaboration, combined with unanticipated adaptations to water scarcity (think: low-flow showerheads and toilets), have effectively “decoupled” growth in regional population from growth in water usage.

“Water use is declining (in the West) overall and on a per-capita basis,” noted Fleck. “This is a phenomenon the economists call ‘decoupling.’”

Fleck spoke at the invitation of ASU’s Future H2O, the Kyl Center at the Morrison Institute and Decision Center for a Desert City.

In the course of a question-and-answer period, Fleck acknowledged in response to an audience-member’s question that there are water-related events that are counter-factual to his thesis about rampant water collaboration.

One of those contradictory issues is the on-going question in California about what to do about the Salton Sea – the ‘accidental’ lake that is fed largely by runoff from the vast Imperial Valley farmlands. With drought and water conservation limiting flows into the Salton Sea, the potential for catastrophic wind-borne chemical pollutants filling the air in the region grows daily.

“The Salton Sea is one of those unsolved problems,” he said.

 

An end-of-year report: Why Water Resources is putting more resources into informing the public about what we do

On By azwater

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It is a safe bet that at one time or another nearly every member of the Water Resources team has needed to explain to an acquaintance what we are not.

No, we’re not the people primarily responsible for assuring the quality of the state’s water supply. Those are our valued colleagues over at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

ADEQ is just across the hall. Come on over some day. We’ll introduce you.

Water Resources protects the state’s water supplies. It is our complex duty to help assure the taps keep flowing.

But, no, we’re not your water provider. Not exactly. In most cases, that would be your community’s water department, like the city of Phoenix. Or – in big-picture terms – our friends over at the Central Arizona Project. Or the Salt River Project.

All of them literally deliver water. We help assure the supply. For the entire state.

And we do more. Lots more. At which point, your casual conversation with that acquaintance gets really complicated.

“It is the mission of the Water Resources communications team to express to the public – to those millions of “acquaintances” out there – what it is that this small-but-vital division of Arizona’s government does. As you can see, there’s a lot to it.”

We administer and enforce the most far-sighted groundwater-management laws in the nation. And, not to brag, but we’ve done that job so well that water demand in many of our communities – despite skyrocketing population and economic growth – has remained flat.

In fact, since 1986, we’ve stored over three and a half trillion gallons of water underground for future use.

Other states and localities have been forced to resort to emergency water-saving measures to combat drought conditions that seem to have caught them by surprise. Through Water Resources, Arizona has been vigilantly preparing for drought for decades.

We negotiate with external political entities – including other states and the federal government – over Arizona’s rights to the Colorado River, a mind-bendingly complex mix of salesmanship, diplomacy and a raw determination to protect the vital interests of Arizonans.

We assure the safety of non-federal dams. We collect and analyze data on groundwater levels. We research the complex intersections of weather and climate and create modelling that attempts to accurately assess Arizona’s water future.

“Other states and localities have been forced to resort to emergency water-saving measures to combat drought conditions that seem to have caught them by surprise. Through Water Resources, Arizona has been vigilantly preparing for drought for decades.”

And we are actively – indeed, urgently – working with Governor Ducey to seek out ways to augment Arizona’s water supplies while taking steps to further conserve what we already have.

That’s not the end of it. Not by a long shot. But you get the picture.

It is the mission of the Water Resources communications team to express to the public – to those millions of “acquaintances” out there – what it is that this small-but-vital division of Arizona’s government does. As you can see, there’s a lot to it.

Gov. Ducey has asked each division of state government to report on their efforts to put into practice efficiencies and best-management practices taught by his “Arizona Management System” instructors. It is part of the governor’s commitment to assure the public gets the most bang for its tax-paying buck.

From time to time in the coming months, this Arizona Water News newsletter will report on the progress that our teams here at Water Resources are making at implementing those AMS efficiencies.

We’ll describe how our strategic-planning team is doing. And report on the efficiency efforts of our team coordinating the Assured and Adequate Water Supply program. We’ll describe how the work of our hydrologists, geologists, engineers, modelers and surveyors is progressing.

This week? Well, it’s all about us. The Water Resources communications team. To paraphrase the late, indefatigable mayor of New York, Ed Koch, “How are we doin’?”

Our Arizona Water News newsletter – the “flagship” of the Arizona Department of Water Resources media empire – increased its subscriber listings from 134 in March to over 2,000 by the end of the year.

Since the early months of 2016, the Water Resources communications team has taken steps to accomplish two primary goals: 1) to enhance public awareness of the condition of the state’s water supply during an epochal period of drought; and, 2) to ensure the transparency of the records and data to which the department has been entrusted.

To accomplish that first goal, we have done a simple thing. It is the same thing that communications teams large and small in our fragmented, decentralized, mostly-online media world are attempting to do: We are expanding our viewing audience by providing useful, timely information and by carefully tracking what our analytics tell us interests that audience.

So, how’s that doin’?

In March 2016, the Water Resources news site attracted 158 page-views. We made a commitment to increase website viewers to 11,000 by year’s end. We blew past that figure in mid-summer and re-set our goal at 20,000. In December, we tallied 3,114 page views, and we logged a total of 26,747 page views for the year. Speaking technically, we crushed it.

How? Well, we gave our audience valuable water-related news to consume, of course, including a multi-media supply of written features, audio podcasts and YouTube video, all of which we made more easily accessible.

But we also dramatically diversified how our audience finds us.

Our Arizona Water News newsletter – the “flagship” of the Arizona Department of Water Resources media empire – increased its subscriber listings from 134 in March to over 2,000 by the end of the year.

Our presence on Twitter and Facebook has increased exponentially. In March, we counted 480 profile visits and 4,272 impressions. In December, those figures stood at 3,914 and 77,100, respectively.

“The advancing news cycle, obviously, played the dominant role in the growth of media interest in water issues involving Arizona and the Southwest. There is that matter of descending water levels at Lake Mead, after all. Still…”

Not all those readers are local readers, either. Our analytics show readers coming to our pages from Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Mexico and at least eight other countries.

In mid-December, meanwhile, we launched our Arizona Water News blog, a regularly updated news feature that began as a special “live news” report on Colorado River negotiations among Upper and Lower Basin Colorado River water users. One recent blog post between Christmas and New Year’s Eve attracted over 700 readers.

Small potatoes by New York Times standards? Well… OK. Sure. But the growth curve is up. Not all “media centers” can say that.

Precious few of them, for that matter, can say they have increased their audiences without having spent a penny on promotion or advertising – or on anything outside their own doors. At Water Resources, all the media magic happens here.

What’s more, our effort to problem-solve our way to better public outreach is bearing fruit in another important respect: It appears to be improving the factual awareness about Arizona’s water story among news media in and outside the state.

Our (admittedly subjective) log of accurate news-media reports on water issues in Arizona tracked an average of one or two reports a month in early 2016 that in our judgment related a factually accurate story.

 In November, we recorded 39 such reports, including news accounts published by Politico, International Business Times, the Denver Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The advancing news cycle, obviously, played the dominant role in the growth of media interest in water issues involving Arizona and the Southwest. There is that whole matter of descending water levels at Lake Mead, after all.

But we’re also confident the steps we have taken to assertively tell Arizona’s water story ourselves have had an impact. Many, if not most, of the media writing about drought in the Southwest now come to the Arizona Department of Water Resources for accurate and timely water data and analysis.

Climate vs weather: Is the California drought ending? Not so fast!

On By azwater
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Violent electrical storm attacks the California Mojave Desert by Jessie Eastland

In the coming days, the northern Sierra Nevada in California is going to get pounded with a literal rushing “river” of moisture that promises to dump upwards of five feet of snow in some of the mountain range’s higher elevations and as mush as two feet of rain in parts of nothern California.

Within a few days, the mighty system will sweep down into some of the more drought-parched regions of southern California, too.

“This is what we’re supposed to be getting,” Johnnie Powell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, told the Los Angeles Times.

“After six years of a drought, I love saying that. This is normal rain and snow that we’re supposed to be getting in December and January.”

So, the end of the five-year California drought is nigh, right? Well, no. It’s not nigh.

The Great California Drought’s end is not nigh for the simple reason that what we are witnessing on the Left Coast is weather. And while an extended “weather” feature like drought is a function of climate, “weather” all by itself is not.

The difference between “weather” and “climate” is a fundamental meteorological distinction.

“Weather is the daily condition of the atmosphere, (including) specifics of temperature, humidity, wind and precipitation,” said Arizona State Climatologist Nancy Selover.

“Climate is the long-term average and extremes of those daily values.”

It is possible, but far from certain, that the enormous “atmospheric river” of precipitation now beginning to batter California is the return to “normal” that Powell of the NWS describes.

That hopeful anticipation is bolstered by other meteorological developments. Northern California also experienced its wettest October in 30 years. And, as reported by the National Weather Service, the same region experienced above-average precipitation in December.

So, is California – and, by extension, the Southwest – out of the drought-woods?

Well, no.

Wet weather is nice, but it would take a long-term trend of similar weather patterns for it to constitute a change in climactic conditions away from the lingering pattern of chronic drought that has left its mark in California for the last five years, as well as in the Southwest for going on 17 years.

And while some parts of the Sierra Nevada range may be getting crazy-deep snow deliveries, the distribution of moisture is far from universal. Despite all that October and December rain and snow, for example, the California-wide snowpack has been measured at just 70 percent of normal, as reported by the California Department of Water Resources.

Of course, that was before that megillah of a storm system began hitting the California northlands – a storm system that, while enormous, still constitutes nothing more than a very encouraging weather pattern.

“We often say, ‘Climate is what we expect, but weather is what we get,’” said Selover.

Arizona water podcast: A chat with the head of Arizona’s golf-course supervisors association about results of recent golf-industry study

On By azwater

Rory Van Poucke, president of the Cactus & Pine Golf Course Supervisors Association, recently took time with the Arizona Department of Water Resources to discuss the results of a study of the state’s golf-course industry, including its economic impact and its water use.

An ADWR report on the study, conducted by University of Arizona researchers, as well as a link to the study itself, can be found here.

 

Click Here!

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Golf in Arizona: UofA researchers find that industry is reducing golf-course reliance on fresh water

On By azwater

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A University of Arizona study of the golf industry in Arizona has found that golf – with an economic impact of $3.9 billion in 2014 — has re-established its footing as an important driver of the state’s economy following the tumult of the 2009-10 economic downturn.

Just as important, however, are the data the U of A researchers collected regarding the industry’s use of water for course irrigation, which is in a rapid state of transition from a supply that once was largely fresh water to one that increasingly includes effluent.

 The five researchers from the U of A’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics concluded their work in December, based on 2014 data.

The study is an update of a 2006 study of the economic impact of golf to the state’s economy. It is largely the product of primary data collected from Arizona golf facilities statewide through a survey.

The University of Arizona team concluded that the golf-course industry is in a more rapid transition to the use of effluent to irrigate greens and fairways than previous research had indicated.

They found that fully 34 percent of water used to irrigate Arizona golf courses statewide is treated effluent.

The most comprehensive water-use data previously had been collected by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2010, which at that time found that effluent accounted for just 28 percent of golf’s total statewide water use. That new data indicates a six percent increase industry-wide in effluent use in just six years.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources also contributed water-use data to the researchers. The department’s data are limited to golf-course irrigation practices in the state’s active-management areas.

Active-management areas, or AMAs, are the areas of the state where water use is regulated by the tenets of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980.

The department’s data showed that effluent use in 2014 had increased by 27 percent since 2004, and that by 2014 effluent represented 26.3 percent of the water mix of golf courses in AMAs. The U of A researchers contend the actual use of effluent statewide is nearly nine percent higher than that AMA-only figure would indicate.

The study found that, in addition to the increasing use of effluent for irrigation, water-related “best management practices” over the last ten years appear to resulted in the following:

  • An average annual savings per-facility of 19.5 acre-feet of water, in large part due to the extensive use of irrigation audits
  • An average of 10.4 acres of turf grass removed
  • An average of 75.8 acres per facility over-seeded for winter play, down from 89.3 acres in 2009
  • Thirty-nine percent of responding golf facilities report that they have engagement in a partnership with a conservation organization

The data compiled by the U of A researchers also bolstered the conclusion that the Arizona golfing industry is bucking a national trend in terms of the sport’s popularity.

Nationally, the golf industry has struggled to rise out of the effects of the Great Recession. As the study notes, “the national supply of golf courses has been decreasing in what is considered a market correction after significant increases in golf course construction during the 1990s.”

Arizona has seen course closures too, but those have been matched by new construction. Also, numerous courses have undergone substantial renovation, according to the study.

One of the more striking economy-related conclusions of the study is that of the 11.6 million rounds of golf played around the state in 2014, nearly a third of those rounds were played by golfers from out of state.

“Over 32 percent of those rounds were played by out-of-state and foreign visitors accounting for $1.1 billion in total sales,”, said Carmella Ruggiero, executive director of the Cactus & Pine Golf Course Supervisors Association. “The golf industry continues to be one of the primary drivers of tourism to Arizona.”

 

 

 

 

Arizona loses another valued water warrior

On By azwater

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Arizona’s water community has lost another dear friend.

Steve Olson, who wore more hats as a defender of Arizona’s water supply than we can count, passed away on Christmas Eve following a lengthy battle with cancer.

As Steve’s son, Nicholas, reported on Facebook, his Dad was surrounded at the end by family, and had taken visits from numerous friends through the day. He even enjoyed a bottle of fine red wine opened by his brother, Jeff Olson.

Steve is the second member of Arizona’s water community to pass away in less than a month. Rick Lavis, an important cotton-industry representative and a member of Governor Ducey’s Water Augmentation Council, died in late November following his own struggle with cancer.

In recent years, Steve had been the principal consultant for his own lobbying group, Olson Policy Services.

Prior to that he had been a senior policy adviser to the Nature Conservancy, executive director of the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association and government relations director for the city of Scottsdale.

He worked with a large group of state-agency volunteers setting up the Water Quality Assurance Revolving Fund, as well as the rules for using it. The WQARF, as the fund was known, constituted the state form of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund.

Many of us here at the Arizona Department of Water Resources remember him as legislative liaison for ADWR.

Working under Director Rita Maguire at ADWR, Steve also oversaw the third management plan for the “active management areas” created by the Groundwater Management Act of 1980. He also served as the deputy area director for the Tucson Active Management Area and was a member of the Arizona Water Protection Fund Commission.

Former agency Public Information Officer Jack Lavelle came to Water Resources in 1999 when Steve was legislative liaison:

“In a few years, Steve left for a new job – I can’t remember where – and I claimed his larger office,” remembers Lavelle.

“That also meant I inherited Steve’s collection of massive three-ring binders, plans, reports and law books filling an entire wall. Steve had escaped his paper trail.

“While I pondered this out-of-date mound of paper, the forces of nature settled the issue. I was across the room working at the computer when shelving collapsed as books, binders and thousands of pages crashed to the floor, panicking the entire 5th and most of the lower floors!

“I still recall the noise. I also remember Steve’s hearty laugh when I told him about it. That’s how Steve was. Life was an amusement to Steve, one he shared with those fortunates in his company.”

More than anything else, Steve will be remembered as the kindest of souls. As his friend and former colleague (all Steve’s colleagues remained his fast friends) Karen Peters of the city of Phoenix also observed on Facebook, Steve was “deeply devoted to making things right in this world.”

Our hearts go out to Steve’s family. He spent many years among us at Water Resources doing all he could to make things right in this world. And he did his job well.

 

 

 

 

Santa’s Snowpack: Christmastime snow accumulation above Lake Powell

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The mountains around Prescott were spectacular over Christmas. So were Flagstaff and the surrounding the San Francisco Peaks.

But when all is said and done, it’s the snowpack in the western Rockies that matters most for our water supply. So, if snowflakes joined those sugar-plums dancing in your head over the holidays, the green line in the graph above shows what you were seeing.

The graph depicts what the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) uses to display the snowpack above Lake Powell, including the average snowpack as measured between 1981 and 2010, and the two most recent full winter measurements. As noted, the green line depicts the current snow-year, so it ends roughly in mid-December.

(The CBRFC uses the term “snow water equivalent” to describe the average or median conditions above various points in the Upper Colorado River Basin.  Snow water equivalent means the amount of actual water in a column of snow.  For example, 10 inches of snow equals one inch of water.)

As the chart depicts, 2015 was way below average snowpack. 2016 was better, but still below average. And the current winter (described as 2017) is just now inching above average.