Significantly, there has been greater inclusion of Native American tribes in water dialogues, and various efforts have been undertaken to elevate their visibility. SE: I’m not precisely an optimist about it, but the effort to minimize those inequities is getting more attention than in the past. How do we prevent future water shortages from exacerbating inequities? HCN: Is there a risk that, in the event of more water shortages, rich people will simply be able to pay to get their water, whether by digging a well or finding another provider who charges three times the normal rate? Meanwhile, folks without those financial resources could lose their homes or be forced to leave a community. There is still nothing to prevent wildcat developers from splitting parcels of land into four or five lots, circumventing the law’s water supply requirement. Those solutions would subject them to that. They all have water tanks and want to live un-impinged by municipal codes and state regulations. Many of the people who live in that community are individualists. But they’re choosing not to pursue that option. Or they could negotiate with private water companies to serve the area. It would mean getting permission to drill wells and building out a distribution system. They could develop a water cooperative, which would tax or levy a fee on all the members to set up a water supply service. SE: They have options they’re choosing not to pursue. HCN: What are the prospects for Rio Verde Foothills residents now in terms of water supply? How dire is the situation exactly? Unfortunately, those moratoriums only apply to official subdivisions. In 2019, a similar announcement was made for Pinal County (southeast of Phoenix). Katie Hobbs released a report from the Arizona Department of Water Resources that said no new certificates of assured water supply could be issued for the West Valley area of Phoenix because there isn ’t enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area. In the case of the Rio Verde Foothills community, we ’ re not talking about developers who have gone through the process of getting the certificate of assured water supply, because of a loophole in the law that says if you ’ re developing a property that ’ s less than six lots, you legally don ’ t have to have any water. The passage of the law itself was a compromise, allowing development to continue, but only if developers could secure a 100-year supply of water for each new home in a subdivision. Susanna Eden: There are several reasons why that the law has not been entirely successful. Why has the law failed to stop suburban growth from happening in areas without a reliable water supply? High Country News: Back in the 1980s, Arizona passed a pretty robust water law - the Groundwater Management Act - that was supposed to help prevent the sort of situation we’re seeing in the Rio Verde Foothills. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. HCN spoke with Eden recently about the Rio Verde Foothills and what it means for Arizona and the fantasy of infinite growth in the desert. She sees the situation in the Rio Verde Foothills as a textbook case on the perils of Arizona’s “wildcat” housing developments, which sidestep the state’s groundwater laws to construct homes without a fixed water supply, as well as the far-reaching implications of the worsening drought on the Colorado River. Susanna Eden, the assistant director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center, has been studying water resources in Arizona and the Southwest for over 30 years. The extra distance means residents might have to pay a much higher prices - in some cases more than triple what they paid for Scottsdale water - if they can afford it. Roughly 500-700 homes without private wells - around 1,000 people in the Rio Verde Foothills - will now have to find another source of water, either by drilling a private well or buying water from another city. But Scottsdale’s main water source, the Colorado River, is continuing to dwindle, and in early January, the city followed through on its warnings. When the city began threatening to cut off the community's access to Scottsdale water in 2015, saying it had to conserve for its own residents, many Rio Verde Foothills residents did not believe it would actually happen. No municipal water pipes reach the Rio Verde Foothills, so about 25% to 35% of the residents rely on a longstanding arrangement in which private water trucks deliver water supplied by Scottsdale.
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