Local opinion: Biggs waters down state crisis

Many reasons exist for Arizonans to reject Andy Biggs’ candidacy for governor.

These include his unflinching support for the president and vice versa, his refusal to affirm Arizona’s 2020 presidential election result, voting to cut Medicaid, embracing the promiscuous crackdown on immigrants and denying the state has a water crisis.

Bingo! Water crisis.

Biggs shrugs off our most important issue, cause aplenty to oppose him without other reasons. Water is existentially necessary — for the economy, housing, food and life — yet he puts full-throated support for more development, specifically housebuilding, well ahead of water supply.

As a lifelong Arizonan and five-term representative of suburban Phoenix’s 5th Congressional District, Biggs should know state issues. He didn’t discuss water in a 19-minute gubernatorial campaign speech at an April Phoenix event featuring the president.

This month, in a 30-minute Arizona Republic interview, he advocated selling more state trust land for housing, barely mentioning water. He did call for ensuring Colorado River supply for Yuma-area farmers but proposed no plan except outreach to federal officials.

Polling in late April by Cygnal, a respected pollster, ranked water the No. 1 issue for Arizonans, before inflation, immigration and taxes; 91.6% were very or somewhat concerned about the long-term water supply.

For Biggs, it’s an afterthought. He told Phoenix’s Fox 10 last fall when asked if we have enough, “We do. We just have to manage our water.”

He blamed Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, his opponent in November if he wins the Republican primary, for water decisions hurting the economy and housebuilding. He falsely quoted Hobbs saying, “We don’t have water.”

“I’m sitting in an office the day the governor said that, and these builders, developers that I’m talking to said they just lost hundreds of millions of dollars” in potential investments, Biggs said.

Meaning, full speed ahead with growth despite water problems.

(Hobbs didn’t say “we don’t have water.” She said aquifers west of Phoenix lacked a 100-year assured supply, as state law requires and water experts verified.)

Biggs may be among those whom water specialist Sharon Megdal meant when she said some think there is no crisis. "This could be a shock to the system," Megdal, director of the University of Arizona's Water Resources Research Center, told the Star.

One shock: Up to 77% of our Colorado River allocation, a key source for Phoenix, Tucson and agriculture, could be cut. Further, the state has just begun studying alternatives, including desalination; developing new supplies will take years, and their costs will mean more shock.

Meantime, Biggs’ simplistic solution — better management — should insult water managers and shock voters.

“When we’re managed correctly and we recharge water correctly, when we’re setting our course so the water can get through the canopy down into the aquifers itself, I think Arizona does OK, as long as we manage it well,” he told Fox 10.

We can’t manage what we don’t have. Biggs ignores that recharge isn’t filling overdrawn aquifers, while overuse and drought deplete the Colorado.

Facts don’t curb his unfettered support for house building. “Some of the (water) management areas that this governor has established actually have prevented the creation of single-family homes and ... given us instead massive apartment complexes,” Biggs said.

His allegiance is to developers, not average Arizonans, many of whom can’t afford the single-family, suburban idyll he envisions. We need leadership, not more pandering to the terracotta roof economy that abets this crisis.

Andy Biggs for governor? No, for failure to recognize the state’s No. 1 issue and lack of an intelligent plan for it.