UA News

The Water Resources Research Center surveyed water stakeholders in the area and found remarkable consensus on a number of issues.

The protracted drought in the region has focused just about everyone’s attention in Tucson about the notion of water as a scarce resource. How much of it is there? Where does it come from? Will there be enough for me?

The Water Resources Research Center at The University of Arizona recently surveyed a range of stakeholders in the community for their perspectives on water planning issues.

WRRC has just released their report, the “Tucson Regional Water Planning Perspectives Study.”

The survey queried 49 stakeholders, from elected officials and local water managers to people with business, environmental and other interests. They were given a set of open-ended questions about how they would envision a regional water management process, including goals and outcomes; participation, public involvement and structure; assumptions and the region of focus; and concerns about engaging in a regional process.

The responses resulted in a number of themes across the board. Stakeholders in each group favored the creation of a long-range regional plan based on a common set of facts. Most thought all of the issues should be on the table at the start of any process, and that anyone with an interest in participating should be allowed to do so.

There was near unanimous agreement that the Tucson Active Management Area, or AMA, should be the region of focus for regional planning. The Tucson AMA is one of five AMAs in Arizona, created by the 1980 Groundwater Management Act under the Arizona Department of Water Resources to achieve safe groundwater yields. The Tucson AMA covers 3,866 square miles across Pima, Santa Cruz and Pinal counties.

Finally, most respondents did not favor creating a regional authority at this time.

Given the historic and contentious nature of access to water supplies, the authors of the report found this overriding desire to cooperate on planning issues to be an encouraging finding. Different stakeholders still have their own ideas about water use, and not everyone is on the same page given the guarded responses to questions.

"I was very encouraged by the degree of cooperation we received in conducting this study. Individuals and organizations are ready to engage in serious regional discussions about our water future," said Sharon Megdal, WRRC director and lead author of the study.

But Megdal and the others also say results of the survey indicate that there may be some willingness to cooperate, especially in the face of long-term population growth and uncertainties about global climate and the regional drought.

In addition, any optimism and goodwill over such a project could quickly disappear if the should the good faith effort underway fail to provide, to use the words of many of those interviewed, a transparent, regional and inclusive process.

The study is available in a pdf format on the Water Resources Research Center Web site.