WSPP330 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Farms swallowing most of Arizona's water Page 2 of 4 '~ underground aquifers - although nobody knows how much water they hold. The state can also draw from a healthy 2.8 million acre-foot allocation from the Colorado River and 1 million to 2 million acre-feet per year from in-state rivers. Farming's changing role It was on those in-state rivers that Arizona's early residents built communities, all the way back to the Hohokam, who lived where Phoenix now stands from about A.D. 300 to 1200. They moved water from the Salt River to their farm fields through a sophisticated system of canals. More modern settlers unearthed the canals and expanded them. In 1903, a group of farmers formed what is now Salt River Project and began building dams and reservoirs to further control the Salt and later the Verde rivers. That's how agriculture shaped Arizona's water use from the start. It's also how, despite the industry's intensive use of water, Arizona avoided becoming another Las Vegas, a city that has exhausted its supply of water for new homes and businesses. ''The reason we're better off than Las Vegas is that we had farming," said Grady Gammage, a Phoenix lawyer and author. Agricultural water supplies can be converted to residential use as growth demands it, but Las Vegas never developed farming. "There is a general awareness in the public that an awful lot of water still goes to agriculture," Gammage said. "There are a lot of people during a drought who are very critical of that. We are getting rid of ago There is a natural progression in which we do that. But we are not so desperate right now that we need to get rid of all farming." Farmers almost become the emergency water bankers, guarding a reserve that might be drained by growth and development if it were readily available - which Gammage said happened in California. "If you get rid of all the ag, you harden your water supply," he said. "Los Angeles allowed urban growth to consume all agricultural use. That could be where we're headed. I think we ought to think very carefully before we allow it to happen." Although farmers have long drawn scorn for what many see as excessive water use, especially when they grow thirsty crops such as cotton and alfalfa, it turns out that replacing farms with homes isn't necessarily reducing consumption. "Arizona agriculture has become pretty damn efficient," said Jim Holoway, assistant director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. "That's not to say there's not room for improvement, but by and large, agriculture is pretty efficient." It used to be that replacing farms with homes and businesses would result in less water use per acre, which encouraged planners who believed the region's water supply would grow with its population. And that proved true for a while. The population grew steadily on farmland served by SRP with no need to bring in more water. But in recent years, developers began shrinking lot sizes to squeeze more homes into an acre and that led to higher per- acre water consumption. The result is that while SRP now delivers just 13 percent of its water to farms, which is down from about half in 1984, the amount of water actually used has remained steady - bucking the theory that converting the land from farms would reduce the amount of water needed. "We're actually seeing even greater density on project lands (than expected)," said Bruce Hallin, SRP's manager for business development. "With more apartments or high-rise buildings, water use per acre could rise in the future." http://www . azcentra1.com/php-bin/ clicktrack/print. php ?referer=http://www.azcentra1.com/...l /24/2005