Community leaders took an important step toward solving the area's water problems this month when they formed a group with the "major players" in the issue, experts said.
Now comes the hard part for members of the Upper Santa Cruz Providers and Users Group: coming up with a solution to the drawdown of the area's groundwater — and finding ways to pay for it.
"They're ahead of the game, but they've got a whole lot of work to do," said Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center.
"They have the major water users and players involved, and that's very important," she said.
"It's very important that these discussions be inclusive, and it's very important to provide information to the general public," Megdal said.
Les Gunderson, a Green Valley resident and member of the providers-users group, said organizers realized a regional solution to the overuse of the area's groundwater must involve discussions among "the biggest players."
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Those include six area water companies, large agricultural and mining firms, golf courses, developers and municipalities.
"We've got a few activist groups, which are useful in drawing attention to the problem," Gunderson said. "But if you're really going to do something about the problem, you've got to have the biggest players involved.
"If you don't have them at the table, you're just flailing away at the problem," he said.
Problem no surprise
The problem of pumping water out of the area's aquifer faster than it can be replaced has been known for years. Nancy Freeman, a Green Valley resident and longtime water-issues activist, estimates the water deficit — the gap between the amount of water removed and the amount that seeps back into the aquifer — at about 40,000 acre-feet a year.
An acre-foot equals 325,829 gallons, enough to cover an acre with 1 foot of water.
Freeman said that aside from studies and pronouncements by public officials, little has been done about the problem, which has grown in recent years along with the area's population.
But Freeman is "very, very optimistic" that the provider-user group will find a solution.
Gunderson, chairman of the Green Valley Water Improvement District board, said members of the providers-users group are just now getting organized, so they don't yet have any specific plans.
But one thing is clear, he said: "Our first priority is to bring CAP water to all of Green Valley, for everyone."
Megdal agreed that finding a way to bring a renewable source of water into the area should be one of the group's top goals — and that the Central Arizona Project is a potential source of that water.
But building a pipeline or other means of transporting the water south from the CAP terminus at Pima Mine Road and Interstate 19 will be "a huge undertaking," she said.
Members of the group must "figure out exactly what to do, how to do it, how much it will cost and who will pay," Megdal said.
Community Water Co. of Green Valley has come up with a controversial way to bring CAP water to the area. Water company officials struck a deal with Augusta Resource Corp., a Canada-based mining company that has agreed to spend $15 million to build a 9-mile pipeline to bring about 5,000 acre-feet of water annually from the CAP terminus.
The pipeline would be part of a system Augusta has proposed to replace groundwater pumped out of the aquifer for an open-pit copper mine that the company wants to develop in the Santa Rita Mountains.
Community Water's pipeline proposal has served as "a catalyst for discussion, and that's good," Megdal said.
A challenge
Gunderson agrees it'll be a challenge to find money to bring CAP water into the area, both for recharge and, possibly, for direct use.
He said the group's members would like to build a facility south of Green Valley, ideally near Canoa Ranch, to use CAP water for recharge.
Another challenge, Megdal said, will be to negotiate for enough CAP water to make a difference in the groundwater deficit.
Community Water Co. and the Green Valley Domestic Water Improvement District both have CAP allotments, each totaling about 5,000 acre-feet annually — "but they're not huge," she said.
Freeman said that because CAP water is costly and "dirty" — laden with salts and other minerals — it should be "the last resort, not the first resort."
She might reconsider her opposition to bringing CAP water to the area for recharge if funding could be found to build a pipeline big enough to carry enough water to solve the area's total groundwater deficit.
"The solution must include more than a CAP pipeline," said Freeman, executive director of the Groundwater Awareness League, a local group.
She'd like to see the providers-users group study a different way of recharging the aquifer: developing a series of catchment basins to capture runoff from torrential rains and hold it long enough to trickle into the aquifer.
Freeman has proposed designing golf courses to catch runoff, which is one reason why she's glad to see that golf courses are included in the providers-users group.
"Up until now, we've had no cooperation by golf courses," she said.
Peggy Bonthron, another Green Valley resident and water consultant, suggests another area in which the group should focus its efforts: conservation.
"A first step of stopping a potential groundwater crisis must include an emphasis on conservation," said Bonthron, who worked for a Santa Ana, Calif.,-area water authority for 13 years before moving here.
"You have to conserve while you are studying the problem," she said in an e-mail. "That is exactly what we did in California, and it stopped a terrible water shortage."
To find out more
For more information on the water providers-users group, contact facilitator Dennis Skelton at 625-8286; Richard and Nan Walden, president and vice president of Farmers Investment Co., 791-2852; Les Gunderson, Green Valley Domestic Water Improvement District board member, 648-5989; or Harold Metz, with Twin Buttes Properties-Park Corp., at 648-1630.
