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<br />think that it ~s a good law ~or the state o~ ArizonA, tAking into <br />account where we are and how we have mismanaged our waters in the <br />past. And it certainly represents a very remarkable action ~or the <br />state of Arizona to go overnight from virtually no management and <br />very little control of groundwater pumping to very rigid control. <br />Now I am convinced that the State Legislature finally bit this <br />bullet and enacted the new law at this particular point in time <br />because of increased concern over the growing imbalance between <br />water supply and water consumption in our state and certainly in <br />the key development areas of state, and because the legislators <br />recognized the need to properly intergrate the new Central Arizona <br />Project water supply into the solution of this mismanagement problem. <br />As I am sure most of you at least are awar~ in our major water use <br />areas of Phoenix, Tucson and the agricultural area in between, Pinal <br />County, we are currently mining groundwater at an excessive.rate - <br />30 times the average repleniShment rate here in Phoenix, 5 times in <br />Tucson and 12 times in Pinal County. The Central Arizona Project <br />has the potential of reducing current overdraft by about 2/3; the <br />remaining 1/3 and future municipal-industrial growth can be met by <br />a combination of conservation and purchase and retirement of agri- <br />cultural land. The Central Arizona Project makes the resolution <br />of this overdraft problem manageable. It minimizes the adverse <br />impact of imposing a new water management law. It would have been <br />infinitely more difficult and would have had serious impact on the <br />State's economy if we had waited 20 years or so until the Central <br />Arizona Project supplies had been absorbed into our economy and then <br />attempted to resolve our water supply imbalance problems. The <br />Legislature really didn't have any choice, it was now or never. We <br />have to dedicate the new CAP supply to assisting and achieving a <br />balance between consumption and supply in our critical basins. If <br />B-IO <br />