Busy water author explains water “collaboration” in the Southwest

On By azwater

fleck-at-asu

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

graph-6

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
desert_electric
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!

podcast

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

On By azwater

2864127440_7dd12a9f05_b

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

steve_olson-003

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

On By azwater

snowpack-in-the-colorado-basin-above-lake-powell

 

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.

A holiday gift to one and all in Arizona

On By azwater

cross-country-skier

No one knows better than your Department of Water Resources that “weather” and “climate” are not interchangeable. Still…

As a Holiday gift to the drought-weary, we will note, simply, that the news just now about water in the Southwest — especially from our neighbors to the coastal west — is pleasing. See here, here and here.

It doesn’t mean our tough water times are ending. It certainly doesn’t mean the long-term challenges facing the Lower Basin Colorado River users are resolved. But at this time of year, it is welcome news nonetheless.

It certainly enlivens our Holiday cheer. Happy Holidays, one and all!

 

5 Questions about DCP for Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources

On By azwater

tom-b-2

After CRWUA: Colorado River water users departed from their annual meetings without agreeing to a drought contingency plan. Where do they go from here?

The Colorado River Water Users Association held its annual meetings in mid-December without agreeing to a long-term plan to protect the integrity of Lake Mead and the Colorado River system from the effects of drought and allocation imbalances.

The result was disappointing… but widely anticipated. The negotiators, including Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke, have been engaged on the issues for many months, and are well-schooled by now in the complexity of the discussions.

On a rainy, stormy Thursday in late December, Buschatzke shared some of his thoughts on where the Lower Basin states and the region’s major water users go from here toward finalizing a DCP…

Click Below!

podcast

Colorado River water users make progress during meetings toward a system-wide drought contingency plan

On By azwater

lake mead

 

Over the years, the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation famously use the annual December meetings of Colorado River water-users to announce big policy changes.

That didn’t happen this time at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association meetings in Las Vegas. Despite a yeoman effort to push through an agreement on a drought contingency plan among the Lower Basin states, the many moving parts of the complex “DCP” agreement did not come together before CRWUA members parted ways.

That doesn’t mean the participants did not make progress on the numerous issues on the CRWUA tables, including but not limited to a DCP.

U.S. negotiators of a proposed extension to the U.S.-Republic of Mexico agreement on Colorado River operations – known as Minute 319 – reported progress toward development of a new agreement, tentatively known as “Minute 32x.”

Among the elements of the international-agreement extension are provisions for voluntary water conservation efforts to benefit the Colorado River system and make water available to users in both the U.S. and Mexico.

The extension agreement would also continue efforts to investigate and develop binational water augmentation programs as well as an on-going wetlands project in the Colorado River delta.

“The proposed minute is good for the United States and good for Mexico,” said Edward Drusina, the chief U.S. negotiator on the international agreement to reporters on the final day of the CRWUA meetings. “And we will do what we can to move it forward.”

At CRWUA, participants reported taking advantage of the opportunity to collaborate and brainstorm face-to-face as new concepts took shape.

Also at CRWUA, the Arizona Water Banking Authority announced its recent purchase of credits from water previously stored by Active Resource Management, LLC, a firm now solely managed by the Vidler Water Company.

Throughout the event, the Bank met with public and private interests to discuss other innovative firming concepts as well as water management strategies the Bank can employ in the future to meet its objectives.

The innovative water-banking authority was established in 1996 to increase the state’s utilization of its Colorado River entitlement and to develop long-term storage credits for the state.

The CRWUA meetings also afforded out-going Interior Secretary Sally Jewell an opportunity to complete her time in office on a high note, signing a decision for managing Glen Canyon Dam over the next 20 years.

Jewell authorized the plan – known as the Long-term Experimental and Management Plan (or, LTEMP) in the wake of an exhaustive environmental-impact review.

The Thursday afternoon signing ceremony gave Jewell an opportunity to weigh in on the on-going DCP negotiations. The Interior Secretary said she was optimistic a deal would soon be reached.

“We want to get as far as we possibly can, and that’s what we’re going to be urging everybody to do,” Jewell said to reporters.

Along with Deputy Secretary Michael Connor, Jewell also announced that upon completion, the collaborative “WaterSMART” program was expected to result in the savings of 1.14 million acre-feet of water within several U.S. water systems, including the Colorado River system.

A Thursday morning CRWUA session featuring Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke provided the event’s most “cards on the table” moment.

California water officials on the panel raised two still-unresolved issues that they see as impediments to a final drought contingency plan: a detailed plan of action from California elected officials regarding the environmentally sensitive Salton Sea; and, a resolution of water allocations issuing from the Northern California Bay Delta.

Buschtazke, however, said it was imperative that the states resolve intra-state issues and come to an over-arching agreement on protecting Lake Mead and the integrity of the Colorado River system overall.

“Failure is not an option,” said the Arizona Water Resources director.

“The details (of the DCP) are still in flux. Details matter. We have to make all pieces of the puzzle fit together. We have forward momentum.”