Small Arizona town saves water to prevent summer shortages

Residents and businesses have collectively reduced municipal water consumption by 30% in the past weeks, stretching the town's resources until September, Mayor Curtis Stacy told The Arizona Republic. By then, the town could have more than two extra wells running and, they hope, monsoon rains to boost the San Carlos reservoir and increase how much water is available.

But they still need a long-term fix.

It's the first time Kearny, a town founded in 1958 about 75 miles north of Tucson, has faced a water crisis of this proportion. The town's water comes from the Gila River and it's regulated by a federal decree that means it is the first to get cutbacks in times of drought. For decades, Kearny hasn't received its full allotment, but has met its needs.

This year is different. With the Coolidge Dam at less than 2% of capacity, Kearny was given just 77 acre-feet of water for the whole year. The town's average use is 270 acre-feet, Stacy said.

Town officials declared Level 1 conservation measures at the start of the year, but water use barely changed. Based on town ordinances, officials implemented Level 5 restrictions in April. Watering lawns and landscapes, washing cars or driveways, and filling pools is strictly prohibited in the continued emergency.

"We're currently using between 0.4 and 0.5 acre-feet per day, down from 0.7," said Stacy, adding that the town still needs another week or two of data to make sure that rate is sustained. "It is a win for the community. I'm so proud of what they've done and how they pulled together and how they spread the word."

Many residents are reusing or hauling water from out of town to keep gardens alive, taking shorter showers, or doing less washing machine loads.

The town — serving some 850 homes, the school district and local businesses — pumps well water close to the Gila River. It could drill new wells to boost its water supply, but only if it is outside the area governed by the federal decree.

There are two such wells, but one only produces 26 gallons per minute, nowhere close to town needs, and the other is being rehabilitated with money from a federal grant. The second will be up and running by June or July and producing 100 gallons per minute, Stacy said.

"It'll offset, but it won't be enough," he said.

For a long-term or permanent solution, the town is talking to lawyers from the mining companies and tribes, who have senior rights to the river water under the 1935 Globe Equity decree. Nearby towns are not impacted because they have more senior water rights, have wells outside of the decree area or are served by a mining company. Kearny's situation is unique.

"I want to try to solve this permanently for this community. So we're not back here in 10 years or next year," said Stacy, who ran and served as mayor for two terms and will leave office this fall. Getting the town to better financial footing was his number one priority, he said. Water has been the focus for the last seven months.

"We're also looking at possibly reusing wastewater treatment plant effluent as a potable water solution. We are exploring long-term ground storage for water," he said.

He declined giving details on the potential partnerships to protect ongoing legal negotiations.

Locals 'keep the faith' in crisis

Kearny residents have had scares with the water situation before. Technical issues with wells have created temporary shortages, and three years ago, a glitch in calculations between the watermaster and town prompted restrictions until the numerical error was solved. This time around is different.

Water levels in the San Carlos reservoir are at a record low. There is about 18,000 acre-feet of water behind Coolidge Dam; less than 2% of what the reservoir can hold. Last year, it was at 16% capacity. As a result, Kearny got a fraction of its water allotment.

Norm and Myra Warren, owners of Norm's IGA, the hometown grocery, said the emergency is scary. They've discussed hauling water from out of town if the crisis continues into the summer.

"We have 14 commercial-size compressors that refrigerate all our produce, beef, frozen products and dairy. Those compressors are cooled with a water system," said Norm Warren. "If we lose water, our systems will start shutting down. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory, of perishable goods, will have to go at fire price."

Both grew up in Kearny, floating and swimming in the river. The crisis is odd and new; they don't remember a water shortage in their childhood or a situation as bad as what they are living right now. The river, west of the town, is still flowing, but there still isn't enough water behind the dam and that water is already set aside for other users down river.

On Monday April 20, officials held a town hall to respond to residents' questions and hear their concerns. Myra Warren, who attended with some 50 residents, felt their questions were answered.

"I feel like everybody is doing their part to try to help us," she said. "Keep the faith."

Across the street, Glitterbomb Salon owner Lee Ann Jones is also concerned about the future of her life and business in Kearny. She moved from Texas to the town in 2019 after her husband, born in town, retired from the military.

Wayne Cude and his wife are already hauling water from a well outside of town to keep their garden alive, a green haven with fig, olive and pomegranate trees. In the local newspaper, Copper Basin News, the mayor gave kudos to the couple, now on track to reduce their monthly water use by 10,000 gallons.

"We're hoping this won't last too long," said Cude, 87, a former teacher and superintendent from the Kearny school district. He moved to town in 1965 and remembers only one other instance of restrictions, but not as severe as this year.

"Times are different and problems are different," he said. "We do our part like everybody else."

Carlene Denton, born in the mining town of Ray and a long-time resident of Kearny, wasn't too surprised about the water crisis but is convinced the town will pull through.

"This has been an ongoing problem," she said, noting the town always comes last when it comes to Gila River water. "We just hadn't been in this big of a drought."

She connected a hose to the washing machine to send water to her plants and trees instead of the sewer, reuses shower water and fills jugs out of town when necessary. The drought across Arizona is significant, she said, and this can only make everybody more conscious of it.

Stacy, the mayor, was born in Kearny and came back to live in town after working 27 years around the world in mining automation. From its origins, he said, the town brought people together. The mining towns of Ray, Sonora and Barcelona were abandoned to give way to the integrated community of Kearny.

People in Kearny, from his grandfather's generation to his, have been through disasters, floods and fires "way worse than what we're dealing with today," he said. "That's the beauty of Kearny. It's a community that came together when things were pretty damn tough."

Ongoing drought and a complicated law

The Gila River, born in the mountains of New Mexico, used to flow some 600 miles through Arizona, creating wetlands and marshes, before emptying into the Colorado River. Today, drought, dams and diversion for agriculture leave it dry halfway. Many smaller rivers that once drained into the Gila River are also dry or intermittent.

America's first people relied on the Gila River for millennia, as did miners, settlers, and towns after them. As on the Colorado River, water use in the first section of the Gila River is ruled by "first in time, first in right" or “prior appropriation.” The earliest users are, by law, the last to lose water in times of shortage. And shortage there is.

Extreme heat, poor monsoon rains and a weak snowpack in recent years have worsened the situation of many rivers across the West.

This year, the mountains feeding the Gila River had 0% to 10% of the snow water they would get in an average winter, according to maps from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Snow has often played a larger role than rain in replenishing aquifers. A University of Arizona report looking at the supply and demand of Gila River water into 2050, suggests the system could be in a 31,000-acre-foot deficit in a worst-case scenario.

Like Kearny, other Gila River water users’ allotment has been cut because of the low water levels in Coolidge Dam.

Farmers in the San Carlos Irrigation and Drainage District in Pinal County will be allotted about 0.2 acre-feet of water per acre of land. Even the most drought-tolerant crops take 10 times as much water.

Noah Hiscox, growing grains, alfalfa and cotton in Coolidge, said it’s been the lowest water allotment he has received in his 47 years farming. Last year was already a record-low allotment, 0.6 acre-feet, but this year, the poor hydrology set a new record.

It’s common that the portion of water they get is adjusted by the Gila Water Commission later in the year if summer rains are good, said irrigation district manager Brandi Ogle. But there would need to be a “drastic shift in weather patterns” for that to happen this year, she added. Kearny could also get its 77-acre-feet of water appropriation revised in July.

In times of drought, like this, higher priority users get their water allotment first, and users down the list get less. The river doesn't get to keep much water.

"Every river in Arizona is overallocated," said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law and senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

"Every single river in Arizona has more people who have a claim to the water in the river than the river can normally pay out, so technically there's always somebody getting cut off."

But the situation in Kearny is unique because the Globe Equity decree "is one of the most complicated areas of water law in the Western United States."

It's a unique area of water law because it's administered day-to-day by the Gila Water Commissioner, "a court-appointed watermaster," Larson explained. There are constant forbearance agreements and negotiations happening inside and outside of courts.

The Commission doesn't get to decide how much water each party gets; that's calculated by law and based on available water.

A "catastrophic winter" made things worse, Larson said: "No municipal water system is ready to have their water supply cut by that much, that fast with so little time to prepare."