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Show , ! Western Resources Colorado River Basin problems Fast-traveling Arizona worries Basin By Helene C Monberg rdifornia Water Commission has amed that the Central Arizona t (CAP J wi1 8 'nto Peration on lin i965...Wesley Steiner, direc-. Arizona Department of Water j7bo said that CAP would s! full operation by V Colorado River Assn. Newslet-if Newslet-if Water 1981. tlSliington...The state of Arizona ed in 13 years from the dark tl first rank among Western states attf management, and its quick Iirity i managing its water "Purees is giving its sister states in Colorado River Basin some con- (fft- na didn't even have a state Jter engineer when the Central Lb Project CAP was authorized ' ,i)68. Now it has a water "Czar." Arizona had gained a reputation of -Mat "mining" of its groundwater L overdraft exceeding 2.5 million "feet a year up to last year, when it a groundwater management act " kmed to bring much of the state Bikiii "safe yield" withdrawals by ,ear 2025. The Interior Department Ills Arizona's 1980 revision of its poundwater law "the most comprehensive com-prehensive groundwater, law in the West." ' . iriiona is building up the com-ience com-ience of its new Department of Water purees DWR to match its clout in ,; ie political arena, where the state - jiiays has been strong. Gov. Bruce 1 Babbitt, D-Ariz., works very closely 3 flit Wesley E. Steiner, the first state nler engineer that Arizona ever had, mdnow its new water "Czar" and the .. 6rst director of its DWR. They, in turn ; : urk very closely with Arizona's in-f in-f fjential state delegation in Congress, ; particularly with Chairman Morris K. I'dall, D-Ariz., of the House Interior : Committee, and Rep. John J. Rhodes, ';Mriz., who last year gave up the '': leadership of the Republican minority L t the House after serving for seven iars in that role. It's a potent water rt team. i The Central Arizona Project Associa-s Associa-s iCAPA is one of the few organiza- ii to backing a water project that maintains a Washington representative., represen-tative., is Morley E. Fox anative 1 fenan with long experience in the ': nier field who keeps an eye on Mopments here relating to CAP. His v- brother, Kel Fox, chairs the Arizona r- liter Commission. The Fox brothers lira still another dimension to the ; wter team working for Arizona's 'nler interests, in Phoenix and 1 Washington. s fceas the federal water programs j'. rt put on the backburner by the r Carter Administration and many water projects appear to be shelved in-; in-; ; finitely, CAP is zipping along, as 'J, Steiner informed the California water "mission recently. This huge diver-' diver-' project designed to bring 1.2 n acre feet of water from Lake Hwsu on the Colorado River to Cen-i? Cen-i? W Arizona is already about one-third ""Plete, according to Morley Fox. He spates about $800 million has been 1 ' 'PPropriated for CAP to date and that a total cost is now projected at $2.1 billion. .. . f' Inconsistent progress that CAP has ' since it was authorized under the rado River Basin Project Act of . iPL 90-537 is viewed somewhat ,. J'Hy by the other Colorado River win states. California is cool to CAP's scheduled Won in 1985 and its full operation r iKlse when CAP Z5 on 1 Mornia must limit its use of Col- '. River water to 4.4 million acre , 'year, as required under the 1968 J lTet Colorado power users are apis ap-is ww that Arizona's Steiner (' 2 Bt0change the formula by which ' L7iVenues are to distributed 'Ceat.'" 1987" CAP's costs steadily rising, wTk"1'1160 t0 get a larger . ita,. Hoover surplus pie than it ' l(Zeunlltledto, about 17.62 percent, . WHoover sale of power in Arizona. ratnrtusers.concerned about t ; we hikes are mainly utilities in ; JJw, Nevada and Arizona. W 8ko wants a new deal on p 4Er after payout in 1987 or caii!I?er Basin is apprehensive too I. ng S Arizona's big CAP mov-; mov-; '7 wward completion while a ; pad uPPer Basin Pects are in ' rive, tJ88 iunior water on mT,- Upper Basin-Colorado, , St cp 0 Utah a"d Wyoming-fear f lornM ater users wU1 6et 80 ac" that.u "UPPef Basin" f , ey m ve Problems get-'i get-'i oj the Upper Basin 2; and when upper Basin f, wveJoPment is ever completed. j h MOVING t- N anH0". t0. mergin its t0P ' Aril .hnical talent to lay Fiona's water supp,y or future, the Babbitt-Steiner team keeps moving. CAP has been plagued with major difficulties from the beginning out it's moving ahead because key eaders aren't afraid to compromise to look for alternative solutions. On March 24 Babbitt told the annual luncheon that he hosts for the broad cross section here interested in water that former Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus talked to him like a dutch uncle to do something about the state's big overdraft in groundwater. Might be problems with validating the CAP repayment and other problems as well, Andrus told him, Babbitt related. As a result he and Steiner put a group of competing water interests together, the group met intensively for months, and it came up with a bill which had little public input outside of the experts that Babbitt and the Arizona Water Establishment rammed thru the legislature last year without amendment. amend-ment. To date, despite the lack of public input, the 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act has not been challenged in court, Morley Fox told Western Resources Wrap-up WRW on April 15. Arizona and several Interior Secretaries haggled for years over allocations of CAP water for the Indian tribes in Central Arizona. Naturally as trustee for the Indians by law, Andrus was interested in allocating the Central Arizona tribes more than Babbitt and the Water Establishment wanted. Andrus An-drus on July 31 announced he would contract with interested Indian tribes to sell them up to 309,810 acre feet of CAP water annually, of which 210,400 acre feet would be a firm water supply. Steiner countered with a proposal which would have provided for nearly as much water for the tribal reservations, reserva-tions, but which would have required that a number of the tribes take effluent, ef-fluent, which they refused. Andrus signed sign-ed contracts with Central Arizona tribes but not the Indians on the Gila River reservation. Rhodes called the allocation by Andrus "entirely a new ballgame." Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., called the Andrus Indian allocation "administrative arrogance". Both M.C's mirrored Arizona leadership's leader-ship's views. And Arizona went to court and won a temporary restraining order . against Andrus on Dec, 18fc198Q, from,.. District Judge Charles Hardy in the U.S. District Court at Phoenix. No final decision has been made on the planned government appeal at this time, WRW was informed on April 15. Steiner told WRW on March 24 Arizona was not going to try to undo the contracts that Andrus had already signed. sign-ed. "We want to concentrate instead on persuading the Gila River Reservation Indians to take effluent," Steiner told WRW.. Despite the bitterness on both sides over the Andrus allocations, Steiner said he had to get this problem resolved and move on to other problems, pro-blems, if CAP is to stay on schedule. Babbitt gave another example of avoiding delay at the March 24 luncheon. lun-cheon. The big storage reservoir to hold CAP water in the Phoenix area was scheduled to be Orme dam, which would result in putting under water a large part of the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation. For this and other reasons, CAP and Orme dam were put on the Carter water "hit list" in April 1977. Under intense pressure from Udall and Co., Carter backed away from challenging CAP, but Orme dam became a "hit list" casualty. Then came three years of floods in the Phoenix area, in 1978, 1979 and 1980. So a Central Arizona Water Control Study was launched under the joint sponsorship sponsor-ship of the Bureau of Reclamation, which is building CAP, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose expertise ex-pertise is flood control. Babbitt said the best alternatives would be presented to the state to choose from in October 1981, and the best plan will be selected regardless of what it is. "We don't have Carl Hayden or Wayne Aspinall to protect us anymore," Babbitt said. No time to quibble-on with the show-that's the attitude at-titude that Babbitt and Steiner project on CAP. They fully plan to have a draft environmental en-vironmental impact statement completed com-pleted by the winter of 1981 and a final EIS completed by the summer of 1982 on a storage facility with floor control features in the Phoenix area, as scheduled. The late Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz., and ex-Rep. Wayne N. Aspinall, D-Colo., were experts on Colorado Col-orado River problems Aside from CAP, Arizona has other serious water problems, including several with the proposed desalter to be built at Yuma and flooding in the Yuma area in Southwestern Arizona; the possibility that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will take jurisdiction over dams on the Salt and Verde rivers in central Arizona and reassign them to other permittees, The dams were built by Interior and are managed by Salt River Project questions about the size and safety of several dams on the Salt and Verde Rivers following recent floods and dam safety inspections. |