Springs that supply all the water for Summerhaven and the Mount Lemmon area north of Tucson are starting to dry up, and creek flows have slowed to a trickle.
The reason: prolonged drought and a low winter snowpack.
“The outlook is not too good,” said Michael Stanley, manager of the Mount Lemmon Water District. “It’s not critical yet, but things are not looking as rosy as if we’d had 200 inches of snow.”
Areas around Summerhaven got a scant total of about 72 inches of snow over the winter, said acting Mount Lemmon Postmaster Pamela Selby-Harmon, who measures snowfall there. That’s well off the 200 inches that mark a good snow year — and vastly below the 300 or more inches that fell in the winter of 1997-98, Selby-Harmon noted.
Stanley said the spring water shortage means the water district might need to tap into storage tanks near Summerhaven that hold about a million gallons of water in reserve.
People are also reading…
“I think we’re going to need it if we don’t get rain early” in the summer, he said. “We’ll be using some of that water, but we try to keep about 300,000 gallons in reserve for firefighting purposes.”
Water restrictions could go into effect if shortages persist.
THE SPRING SITUATION
Two spring sources near Summerhaven — one in Upper Sabino Canyon and the other in Carter Canyon — provide water for the area, Stanley said.
“We’re spring-fed. We don’t have a well we can tap into,” he said.
Stanley said the springs combined can produce flows of 30 to 40 gallons a minute when moisture is plentiful.
“But the Carter Canyon source is producing about 5 gallons a minute now,” and the Upper Sabino Canyon source has varied from nearly 20 gallons a minute to as low as about 5 gallons a minute, he said.
Anemic spring flows mean that storage tanks in Upper Sabino Canyon and elsewhere on the mountain could soon play a vital role.
“That can be our lifesaver without having any more water coming,” Stanley said. Overuse of those reserves, though, could diminish water available for fighting fires, which pose a serious threat in times of drought.
SEASON OF HEAVY USE
Stanley said the water district has about 270 customers, but water use on the mountain is about to increase significantly.
“Our busy season doesn’t start until the Memorial Day weekend,” Stanley said. “People open up cabins and inhabit houses, and that’s also when our (daily) visitor population grows.”
Residents, summer cabin occupants and throngs of visitors use lots of water.
“We figured we would need 3 million gallons to get us through the summer” in earlier years, but less should be needed now because the district has fewer customers since the devastating 2003 Aspen Fire, Stanley said.
Contact reporter Doug Kreutz at dkreutz@azstarnet.com or at 573-4192.
Japanese company invests in mine near Mount Lemmon
