WEBVTT 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:07.447 Ok, great. Give us a little slight background. So what uh John Dave asked 00:00:07.480 --> 00:00:11.495 me to talk about is just sort of walker stuff in general, which I do a 00:00:11.528 --> 00:00:17.076 fair amount of um people misperceive that I am a water lawyer. I am a 00:00:17.109 --> 00:00:20.637 lawyer, but I'm not actually a water lawyer. I'm a real estate lawyer. Uh 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:26.396 I mostly do um zoning cases and complicated public, private real estate 00:00:26.429 --> 00:00:30.576 projects such as a lot of the buildings that have been built on the Rio 00:00:30.609 --> 00:00:35.695 Sola um have been built using complex public private partnership financing 00:00:35.728 --> 00:00:39.796 methods. So I can talk about that if you want. Um My guess is you don't, 00:00:39.829 --> 00:00:46.217 it's frankly not all that interesting. Um I got into the water biz uh 00:00:46.250 --> 00:00:51.457 largely because I had this recognizable name. And so I got recruited by 00:00:51.490 --> 00:00:55.057 the city of Phoenix to run for the board of the Central Arizona Project uh 00:00:55.090 --> 00:01:01.707 back in the nineties. And at that point, the cap had been sort of uh the 00:01:01.740 --> 00:01:06.867 territory of retired governors and other people who didn't have to do very 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:11.775 much. And so the deal was when you vote, it's like it did last. It's the 00:01:11.808 --> 00:01:16.587 below state mine inspector, uh, when the only state in the union that 00:01:16.620 --> 00:01:19.507 elects the state mine inspector, but somewhere after you vote for that, 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:23.025 you vote for the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Board and you 00:01:23.058 --> 00:01:28.706 vote for a block of people's nonpartisan office unpaid. And, uh, nobody 00:01:28.739 --> 00:01:32.376 ever knows who to vote for. It's changed a little bit. Now, there are 00:01:32.409 --> 00:01:37.947 actual campaigns for this, uh, position. Um, not sure why, but there are. 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:42.576 Um and so the city asked me to run because they thought I knew something 00:01:42.609 --> 00:01:46.197 about urban development issues and they thought I would get elected just 00:01:46.230 --> 00:01:49.316 purely because people see the name and they, oh, I've heard that before. 00:01:49.349 --> 00:01:52.936 It's a big pink building in Tempe. Let's vote for that. Uh So I did, I 00:01:52.969 --> 00:01:56.885 got elected. I didn't do any campaigning of any kind and that sort of got 00:01:56.918 --> 00:02:01.117 me interested in the water business. And I think um pa part of what I 00:02:01.150 --> 00:02:07.816 learned in doing that is that water generally has been treated as a very 00:02:07.849 --> 00:02:13.396 arcane specialty of engineers, hydrologists and lawyers and the public has 00:02:13.429 --> 00:02:17.416 largely been excluded from understanding water issues. Um The people who 00:02:17.449 --> 00:02:22.424 deal with it have made it intentionally complex. They speak in weird coded 00:02:22.457 --> 00:02:28.136 phrases. They use acronyms that no one can understand. Um A and that's 00:02:28.169 --> 00:02:35.116 because um water for a very long time has been treated as sort of a magic 00:02:35.149 --> 00:02:39.775 thing in the west. And so as I spent time on the cap board, I got to 00:02:39.808 --> 00:02:44.346 thinking about water a lot. Um, and I, I went off the board meeting in 00:02:44.379 --> 00:02:48.525 2005, so I haven't been on the board in a long time, but I still talk 00:02:48.558 --> 00:02:52.275 about water a lot and write about water a lot, which leads me to the new 00:02:52.308 --> 00:02:57.376 book coming out next week. Where's the camera, um, uh, which has got a 00:02:57.409 --> 00:03:01.886 chapter on water in it. Um And the real Sola actually is in here a little 00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:07.286 bit. Um I, I am a, a fierce defender of the Tempe Town Lake which still 00:03:07.319 --> 00:03:12.866 has a lot of critics. Um uh There, I think one of the misunderstandings we 00:03:12.899 --> 00:03:19.767 have about water in Arizona is this notion that it should not be used for 00:03:19.800 --> 00:03:27.217 anything enjoyable. Um that it is frivolous to do things like use water to 00:03:27.250 --> 00:03:32.525 celebrate um pieces of the urban fabric. Um And so you will see a cities 00:03:32.558 --> 00:03:37.217 periodically turning off all their fountains to sort of make people suffer 00:03:37.250 --> 00:03:41.606 to remind us that we live in a desert. I think that's a really misguided 00:03:41.639 --> 00:03:45.126 way of thinking about water. I think water should be thought of as a way 00:03:45.159 --> 00:03:49.555 of sort of punctuating the urban fabric and celebrating life in the desert. 00:03:49.588 --> 00:03:53.427 That doesn't mean we should waste it, but putting it back in a river bed 00:03:53.460 --> 00:03:58.017 , which is what the Tempe Town Lake is, is not wasting water. Um You know 00:03:58.050 --> 00:04:02.495 that the from, from the time of John Wesley Powell on and the reclamation 00:04:02.528 --> 00:04:05.547 era, there was this presumption that the right thing to do with water in 00:04:05.580 --> 00:04:09.767 the West was to take it out of the rivers because flowing water in the, in 00:04:09.800 --> 00:04:14.876 , in the arid part of the United States was wasting war. Well, now we're 00:04:14.909 --> 00:04:17.455 sort of coming to have a more sophisticated understanding that having 00:04:17.488 --> 00:04:22.926 water in rivers is not wasting war. Um that has all kinds of benefits for 00:04:22.959 --> 00:04:28.526 uh wildlife, for uh heat mitigation, for aesthetics, for all sorts of 00:04:28.559 --> 00:04:35.726 things. So we're now much more um vigorously debating the concept of using 00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:40.217 water for things other than simply growing crops, which is what started 00:04:40.250 --> 00:04:43.106 out being a deal. So let me back up for a moment. One of the things I I 00:04:43.139 --> 00:04:46.426 tell people about water is I think you have to start from the most 00:04:46.459 --> 00:04:49.645 fundamental sort of notion that there are four things you need for human 00:04:49.678 --> 00:04:54.627 life, you need land, you need air, you need sunshine and you need water. 00:04:54.660 --> 00:04:57.426 And basically, that's it. If you got those, you can make everything else, 00:04:57.459 --> 00:05:02.046 but you can't make any of those that those are give them to us in one way 00:05:02.079 --> 00:05:06.817 or another. Um Well, only one of those things is readily portable water. 00:05:06.850 --> 00:05:12.395 The others are kind of where you find them. Um And that portability of 00:05:12.428 --> 00:05:18.007 water is the story of the Western US. So you will see, for example, one of 00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:22.995 the things I take on in this book is a criticism of cities like Phoenix 00:05:23.028 --> 00:05:28.075 because our water comes from far away. Well, this is in my mind, a 00:05:28.108 --> 00:05:33.717 mindless and not very thoughtful critique of a place like Phoenix. All 00:05:33.750 --> 00:05:39.096 cities are necessarily concentrations of people that draw on a larger area 00:05:39.129 --> 00:05:42.947 of resources to support them. That's what a city is, a concentration that 00:05:42.980 --> 00:05:47.026 draws on a larger area of resources, that larger area could be food, it 00:05:47.059 --> 00:05:51.856 could be concrete, it could be iron or, or whatever it is it's brought to 00:05:51.889 --> 00:05:55.226 where people are concentrated and water is just a commodity like any other 00:05:55.259 --> 00:05:58.805 commodity. And it's moved to where a city is. The difference is that in 00:05:58.838 --> 00:06:02.856 the west, we move at greater distances and there's nothing inherently 00:06:02.889 --> 00:06:07.346 wrong with that. Um Phoenix got rated one of the least sustainable cities 00:06:07.379 --> 00:06:12.305 in America a few years ago because our water comes from far away. Same 00:06:12.338 --> 00:06:16.995 survey rated Tucson as more sustainable than Phoenix because Tucson at the 00:06:17.028 --> 00:06:21.986 time was mining groundwater pumping groundwater to support the city. This 00:06:22.019 --> 00:06:25.575 is absolutely contrary to 100 years of Arizona water policy. We have been 00:06:25.608 --> 00:06:29.955 trying for a long time to get off of groundwater because it's exhaustible. 00:06:29.988 --> 00:06:33.447 The reason it's called mining is when you use it up, it's gone and get on 00:06:33.480 --> 00:06:37.805 to renewable resources which are flowing streams. So that's an early 00:06:37.838 --> 00:06:42.145 effort to make a city sustainable. That was completely misunderstood by a 00:06:42.178 --> 00:06:46.197 website called sustain lane.com that got it 180 degrees wrong, just 00:06:46.230 --> 00:06:50.245 totally got it wrong. The second thing that I think is interesting about 00:06:50.278 --> 00:06:54.705 water is a commodity is economists talk about public use goods and private 00:06:54.738 --> 00:07:00.156 use goods. So a private use good is like land, land in our system is owned. 00:07:00.189 --> 00:07:05.286 Even if the government treats land, we say the government owns that. Um 00:07:05.319 --> 00:07:09.776 there are systems that treat land as more of a common use good. Um Some of 00:07:09.809 --> 00:07:13.416 the uh Spanish traditions in the West that had the concept of Eido, which 00:07:13.449 --> 00:07:20.226 is the um the commons is a, is a common use. Good. Um uh Air in our system 00:07:20.259 --> 00:07:24.096 is a public use good. Nobody owns air. I mean, you have a little tank of 00:07:24.129 --> 00:07:27.765 it, maybe a little bit, but basically it's free for the taking. Um, 00:07:27.798 --> 00:07:32.296 sunshine is a public use good, free for the taking water is the only one 00:07:32.329 --> 00:07:35.086 of those four fundamental things that sometimes is one and sometimes is 00:07:35.119 --> 00:07:40.116 the other. Um when uh you have water in a glass, that's your water, you 00:07:40.149 --> 00:07:43.937 own that water. Um When you pay for it to come out of the tap and use it 00:07:43.970 --> 00:07:46.495 in your backyard or put it in your swimming pool, it's your water. When 00:07:46.528 --> 00:07:51.276 you're pumping it up from underneath the ground underneath land, you own. 00:07:51.309 --> 00:07:54.705 Uh We think of that as a private use good when water is flowing through 00:07:54.738 --> 00:07:57.906 your property, it's not a private use good. It's a public use good. You 00:07:57.939 --> 00:08:02.616 can use it but you don't get to own it and keep it. Um, you have to allow 00:08:02.649 --> 00:08:06.296 it to leave your property at the same rate at which it entered your 00:08:06.329 --> 00:08:13.086 property. That distinction gives rise to one of the complex problems of 00:08:13.119 --> 00:08:17.305 Western water law, which is that we treat surface water and groundwater as 00:08:17.338 --> 00:08:22.096 different things. We treat groundwater as one of these private commodities 00:08:22.129 --> 00:08:28.205 and surface water as if it is a public commodity and that bedevils Arizona 00:08:28.238 --> 00:08:34.635 because um if you live up near the upper Verde River and you have uh a 00:08:34.668 --> 00:08:39.866 cabin and an acre of land and a pump, you can pump all the groundwater you 00:08:39.899 --> 00:08:44.106 want, even if you're sucking it out from under the river, that's changing. 00:08:44.139 --> 00:08:50.836 We, we are in a long uh 50 year series of lawsuits about the artificial 00:08:50.869 --> 00:08:54.157 hydrological distinction between groundwater and surface water, which 00:08:54.190 --> 00:08:57.797 doesn't make any sense. And we're slowly beginning to break down that 00:08:57.830 --> 00:09:02.667 barrier and begin to understand um some differences about about the way 00:09:02.700 --> 00:09:07.275 water is treated and handled. Um We also treat water as kind of the, the 00:09:07.308 --> 00:09:12.275 ultimate tribal commodity. Um People we share water with are us, people 00:09:12.308 --> 00:09:16.025 who are trying to take it away, are them. So you all know the apocryphal 00:09:16.058 --> 00:09:20.456 story. I I hope about the last time one state in the union brandished arms 00:09:20.489 --> 00:09:23.297 against the motor, which was Arizona, California over the waters of the 00:09:23.330 --> 00:09:28.706 Colorado River. Um We didn't think California should be entitled to as 00:09:28.739 --> 00:09:33.336 much water from the river as they had been allocated by the Boulder Kenyon 00:09:33.369 --> 00:09:38.427 Project Act. And so that led to litigating about it. And BB Moore who 00:09:38.460 --> 00:09:40.956 lived in a little building right over here in Tempe was the governor at 00:09:40.989 --> 00:09:44.385 the time and set the Arizona National Guard out to try to stop California 00:09:44.418 --> 00:09:49.467 from building a dam to divert water. And he had like two guys from his 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:53.797 office with rifles and that's the last time one state threatened to shoot 00:09:53.830 --> 00:09:57.307 at another state in the history of the union may happen again before too 00:09:57.340 --> 00:10:02.255 much longer at the rate we're going, who knows? Um, so, so water's got all 00:10:02.288 --> 00:10:05.836 these kind of interesting, different uh, aspects to it. Let me tell you 00:10:05.869 --> 00:10:08.875 another two other things about, about water that you need to think of. Big 00:10:08.908 --> 00:10:15.066 picture wise. One is that the price of water is really complicated. Um, 00:10:15.099 --> 00:10:18.826 and it doesn't have much to do with what water costs, uh, water for the 00:10:18.859 --> 00:10:23.297 most part, we, we treat as free. What you're paying for is the cost of 00:10:23.330 --> 00:10:28.547 transporting it and treating it to get it to you. And even then we heavily 00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:32.677 subsidize it because we for a long time thought of water as being this 00:10:32.710 --> 00:10:36.356 thing that should be, you know, it's necessary for life. So it really 00:10:36.389 --> 00:10:40.206 should be as close to free as possible. It's gotten a lot more expensive 00:10:40.239 --> 00:10:43.307 here in the last few years, those of you who own houses or if your parents 00:10:43.340 --> 00:10:46.677 have complained about their water bills, um, it's gotten a lot more 00:10:46.710 --> 00:10:51.177 expensive, um, but it isn't even close to what it actually costs. Uh, and 00:10:51.210 --> 00:10:56.015 the price has very little to do with reality. It has to do with what you 00:10:56.048 --> 00:11:00.417 can get people to pay and how much it costs to move it somewhere. And 00:11:00.450 --> 00:11:04.356 there is a fundamental difference between 00:11:04.389 --> 00:11:11.395 the price of a bottle of water that you buy and own and the price you pay 00:11:11.428 --> 00:11:17.186 for the right to get a set amount of water all the time. So you'll hear 00:11:17.219 --> 00:11:22.667 references to the price of water by the gallon or by the acre foot. 00:11:22.700 --> 00:11:27.275 Sometimes people are telling you the price of the actual water. Sometimes 00:11:27.308 --> 00:11:31.236 they are telling you the price of the right to receive that much water on 00:11:31.269 --> 00:11:36.456 an annual basis and it gets very confusing and, and people can't sort of 00:11:36.489 --> 00:11:44.489 sort it out. Um Agriculture, for example, pays something like $20 an acre 00:11:44.599 --> 00:11:52.525 foot for water. Um at your house, you are paying something like $250 maker 00:11:52.558 --> 00:11:58.616 for, for more or more. Uh maybe up into the thousands uh an acre foot for 00:11:58.649 --> 00:12:04.696 water. Um an acre foot is an acre of land, a foot deep. Uh It is a 00:12:04.729 --> 00:12:08.316 measurement that is used only in the western United States. Nobody else 00:12:08.349 --> 00:12:11.657 uses this because it was a measurement adopted by the Bureau of 00:12:11.690 --> 00:12:15.356 reclamation. So the next thing you have to understand about water in the 00:12:15.389 --> 00:12:19.645 West is that Western water has this doctrine of prior appropriation, which 00:12:19.678 --> 00:12:26.236 is probably a phrase you've heard before, which means that it isn't, um, 00:12:26.269 --> 00:12:31.436 just whoever wants the water can use it. Nor is it like some places in the 00:12:31.469 --> 00:12:36.186 country, whoever has the biggest pump wins. It's whoever got there first. 00:12:36.219 --> 00:12:40.515 It's a first in time first in right doctrine. The reason that exists in 00:12:40.548 --> 00:12:45.927 the West is that was the doctrine that the legal system sort of invented 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:49.936 to encourage settlement in the West. So water is kind of the ultimate 00:12:49.969 --> 00:12:53.936 economic development tool in the West. We wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be 00:12:53.969 --> 00:12:59.486 able to live in, in Steger space beyond the 100th meridian. Um Unless we 00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:04.167 had a way of capturing and moving more so people could use it. One of the 00:13:04.200 --> 00:13:07.936 ways we incentivize the settlement of the West was to create this doctor 00:13:07.969 --> 00:13:12.635 of prior appropriation. It's basically says we want to settle the desert. 00:13:12.668 --> 00:13:16.657 So if you run out there and find some water, you get to keep it and you, 00:13:16.690 --> 00:13:22.836 if you settle there and it's like homesteading only with water. Um And 00:13:22.869 --> 00:13:26.385 that's a problem in today's world because it was a doctrine that worked, 00:13:26.418 --> 00:13:30.255 it worked really well. And so there's a really lot of people here now and 00:13:30.288 --> 00:13:37.057 that, that's putting serious stress on water going into the future. Um 00:13:37.090 --> 00:13:41.246 III I mentioned earlier how we have treated water as this sort of magic 00:13:41.279 --> 00:13:48.946 commodity that is the province of uh engineers and water lawyers. Um The, 00:13:48.979 --> 00:13:54.885 the view of those people tends to be, tell me how much water you need. 00:13:54.918 --> 00:13:59.096 Tell me where you want it delivered and leave me alone. I will go get it 00:13:59.129 --> 00:14:05.907 and bring it. So, um William Mulholland, the famous guy who dedicated the 00:14:05.940 --> 00:14:12.427 Colorado uh the aqueduct uh that brought water to Los Angeles. Um I, I, if 00:14:12.460 --> 00:14:15.566 you guys ever seen the movie Chinatown, this is a real tragedy that most 00:14:15.599 --> 00:14:18.186 people in your generation don't see the movie China. It's a great movie. 00:14:18.219 --> 00:14:23.326 Download it sometimes. That's um Faye Dunway, Jack Meson, Roman Polanski 00:14:23.359 --> 00:14:29.996 um uh directed it and it's about uh w Mulholland fictionalized. Uh he's 00:14:30.029 --> 00:14:34.537 called Moray um in the movie and sort of the rape of the Owens River 00:14:34.570 --> 00:14:38.297 Valley to water the San Fernando Valley. But when he turns the head gate 00:14:38.330 --> 00:14:42.446 to flow the water out, he says there it is. Take it, meaning I brought you 00:14:42.479 --> 00:14:46.816 the water, you want, you guys fight about what to do with it. We, we, we 00:14:46.849 --> 00:14:51.726 tended to keep the public out of water decisions and that's a distinction 00:14:51.759 --> 00:14:55.307 that's beginning to break down because as we bump up against an era of 00:14:55.340 --> 00:14:59.066 limits where we can't solve our water problems by going and capturing 00:14:59.099 --> 00:15:03.255 another river or towing an iceberg or cloud seeding or something else, 00:15:03.288 --> 00:15:07.755 we're going to have to start to make tough decisions about water. So, one 00:15:07.788 --> 00:15:10.775 of the things about all this that I think is relevant to the Rio Salado 00:15:10.808 --> 00:15:14.537 and, and, and interesting in the context of the Rio Salado project is at 00:15:14.570 --> 00:15:18.366 the time the project, um, was proposed. And, and I'm really, when I say 00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:20.866 that I'm talking about the Tempe Town Lake. Now, at the time that T Town 00:15:20.899 --> 00:15:24.525 Lake was proposed, there was this rollicking debate about whether or not 00:15:24.558 --> 00:15:27.755 we should actually do it, whether it should be filled with water. The 00:15:27.788 --> 00:15:31.167 Timby Town Lake for point of reference is about 6000 acre feet of water. 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:34.606 When I use these acre, there's none in it today. There's not even light 00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.375 put in there today, but it's about 6000 acres of water. Um We have the 00:15:38.408 --> 00:15:43.157 right to 2.8 million acre feet of water from the Colorado River. Um The 00:15:43.190 --> 00:15:48.996 solar project can deliver about 850,000 acre feet of water uh on average, 00:15:49.029 --> 00:15:53.496 generally year in and year out. So, should we take 6000 acre feet of that 00:15:53.529 --> 00:16:00.576 water which could support about each acre foot will support about 10 00:16:00.609 --> 00:16:08.116 people at today's usage rates for a year. Um So it would um support, you 00:16:08.149 --> 00:16:12.826 know, a lot of people, 100 and 20,000 people or something like that. Um 00:16:12.859 --> 00:16:17.395 Should we use it for the leg? Should we use it to grow cotton in Pal 00:16:17.428 --> 00:16:24.686 County. Should we use it to entice another 150,000 people to move here and 00:16:24.719 --> 00:16:30.145 live and use it in their houses? Um Should we use it for golf courses? 00:16:30.178 --> 00:16:34.547 Should we use it for an Intel factory? Which is a heavy water consumptive 00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:41.135 use. Um Should we use it for uh data server, server farms hugely water 00:16:41.168 --> 00:16:44.167 intensive because of the cooling mechanisms that are needed for though 00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:48.336 some of them are using dry cooling today. Um Well, we could do any of 00:16:48.369 --> 00:16:52.395 those things we wanted with it or should we put in a lake where, you know 00:16:52.428 --> 00:16:59.996 , 100,000 people a day, see it and get the paddle canoes on it or should 00:17:00.029 --> 00:17:04.085 we leave it in the river and, and let it flow into the Gulf of Mexico and 00:17:04.118 --> 00:17:12.118 sort of replenish the uh the riparian systems of Arizona. Well, 00:17:12.709 --> 00:17:15.585 we ought to talk about that. We ought to talk about those competing uses 00:17:15.618 --> 00:17:20.516 and how to make those decisions. We don't do that. Uh What we do rather is 00:17:20.549 --> 00:17:26.315 sort of allow that decision to get made through a messy combination of 00:17:26.348 --> 00:17:34.348 these prior appropriate rights of pricing. Um And of just kind of um a 00:17:35.689 --> 00:17:43.285 series of, of a much um less comprehensive conversations and dialogues 00:17:43.318 --> 00:17:47.956 about it. Um I think the Timby Town Lake is, is a good thing. I think it's 00:17:47.989 --> 00:17:52.835 gonna ultimately uh already is resulting in significant economic benefit 00:17:52.868 --> 00:17:58.535 to TP. Um I think it is something that gives character to what is 00:17:58.568 --> 00:18:03.305 otherwise a fairly seamless and somewhat uninteresting urban form that we 00:18:03.338 --> 00:18:07.795 have in the city of Phoenix. Um, and I think it probably makes more sense 00:18:07.828 --> 00:18:11.406 to use 6000 acre feet of water that way than it does using the equivalent 00:18:11.439 --> 00:18:15.746 amount of water growing alfalfa in Penal County where we use way more than 00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:20.897 6000 acre feet. Um, in the Sun core that is Phoenix Tucson and Penal 00:18:20.930 --> 00:18:27.897 County in between. Um about 70% of the water still goes to agriculture. 00:18:27.930 --> 00:18:33.486 Um But people look at the Tempe Town Lake and will say, well, you know, in 00:18:33.519 --> 00:18:37.766 California, they're having all these terrible water problems and Tempe is 00:18:37.799 --> 00:18:44.285 like gonna refill this lake that has no purpose. Um I think it does have a 00:18:44.318 --> 00:18:47.637 purpose, but I think there's also a whole bunch of differences between us 00:18:47.670 --> 00:18:52.266 and California. Um So if you get in one of these conversations with 00:18:52.299 --> 00:18:56.156 friends or visitors from out of state who want to criticize Arizona, they 00:18:56.189 --> 00:19:01.166 give you a few ways in which to explain Arizona and Arizona's water 00:19:01.199 --> 00:19:06.377 situation. Um We still use, as I said, about 70% of the water in the Sun 00:19:06.410 --> 00:19:11.016 quarter still goes to agriculture. The reason we haven't had the problems 00:19:11.049 --> 00:19:16.156 California has had with regard to water use is that we have diminished the 00:19:16.189 --> 00:19:22.065 long term rights to water that agriculture has in a way that allows us in 00:19:22.098 --> 00:19:26.156 times of drought. To shift water from agricultural uses to urban uses. Now 00:19:26.189 --> 00:19:29.186 , we can't do that with groundwater, but we can do it with surface water 00:19:29.219 --> 00:19:32.946 with cap water and SRP water and that's what's happened. The second thing 00:19:32.979 --> 00:19:39.406 is that this over project has urbanized. So most of SRP is now houses, all 00:19:39.439 --> 00:19:43.867 of our houses are probably within the, the service territory of the SRP. 00:19:43.900 --> 00:19:49.186 Um In, in Arizona, in central Arizona, we tend to grow crops and 00:19:49.219 --> 00:19:53.367 subdivisions in the same place. That isn't true in California or Colorado. 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:56.956 In California, people live on the coast. Farming takes place in the 00:19:56.989 --> 00:19:59.347 central valleys. And so the farmers in the cities hate each other and 00:19:59.380 --> 00:20:02.406 fight all the time and the farmers have locked up all the water and they 00:20:02.439 --> 00:20:07.166 won't let it shift to urban uses here as we urbanize, we have converted 00:20:07.199 --> 00:20:11.936 farms to urban uses and that diminishes the amount of water being used. I 00:20:11.969 --> 00:20:16.607 just finished a zoning case this last year down south of Tucson for a 6000 00:20:16.640 --> 00:20:20.686 acre master plan community that is currently a pecan grove. It is the 00:20:20.719 --> 00:20:25.256 world's largest pecan grove and it is the largest single groundwater user 00:20:25.289 --> 00:20:31.357 in the state of Arizona. When that converts to being 22,000 houses, the 00:20:31.390 --> 00:20:37.236 water use of those 6000 acres will go down by between 60 70%. Uh A pecan 00:20:37.269 --> 00:20:42.555 tree uses more than a family that's in the course of a year. Um Now I love 00:20:42.588 --> 00:20:46.785 pecans. I think pecans are great that pecan growers are my clients over 00:20:46.818 --> 00:20:51.647 the long term with pecan growing survive. I, I don't know. Um one of the 00:20:51.680 --> 00:20:55.127 challenges of agriculture and this is part of what's gone wrong in 00:20:55.160 --> 00:20:58.476 California. California used to be by growing vegetables. It has 00:20:58.509 --> 00:21:03.936 increasingly migrated to nut crops like almonds and grapes for wine with 00:21:03.969 --> 00:21:06.647 grapes and almonds. You can't take the water away from in times of drought. 00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:12.887 The plants will die vegetables. You can plant alfalfa, you can plant. So 00:21:12.920 --> 00:21:16.456 alfalfa gets heavily criticized in Arizona because we grow a lot of it and 00:21:16.489 --> 00:21:20.065 much of it is shipped to China. But when we hit a water crisis, you can 00:21:20.098 --> 00:21:25.436 plant the alfalfa, you can purchase that water from farmers uh and shift 00:21:25.469 --> 00:21:29.847 it to higher value. Uses another difference between Arizona and California 00:21:29.880 --> 00:21:34.717 is that California didn't regulate groundwater until about a year ago. We 00:21:34.750 --> 00:21:39.315 started in 1980. We started limiting the, the use of groundwater and, and 00:21:39.348 --> 00:21:43.097 a final difference is in the last 20 years in Arizona, we have been 00:21:43.130 --> 00:21:47.387 banking water underground. Nobody else anywhere in the world has done this 00:21:47.420 --> 00:21:51.186 to the degree we have. Um There was an article you may have seen a while 00:21:51.219 --> 00:21:56.936 back in uh I think it was the L A Times. Uh that said if you think the 00:21:56.969 --> 00:22:00.377 water, uh if you think the drought in California is bad, wait until you 00:22:00.410 --> 00:22:04.696 see what happens in Arizona. Now, the reason that article says that is 00:22:04.729 --> 00:22:08.097 that we're the junior right holder of the Colorado River. That was a 00:22:08.130 --> 00:22:11.706 bargain we had to agree to in order to get the cap funded by the federal 00:22:11.739 --> 00:22:15.696 government, we were pissed off about it. Yeah. Um Do you all understand 00:22:15.729 --> 00:22:20.305 what the cap is and how it's different from SRP? 00:22:20.338 --> 00:22:23.996 The Central Arizona project is a canal system that brings water from the 00:22:24.029 --> 00:22:29.127 Colorado River to Phoenix And Tucson. The Salt River Project manages the 00:22:29.160 --> 00:22:34.676 water of the Salt River through Lake Roosevelt in the Phoenix Metro area, 00:22:34.709 --> 00:22:39.246 right? And they're, and they're separate entities. Um SRP goes back to the 00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:43.256 early part of the 20th century and the building of Roosevelt ba. Um The 00:22:43.289 --> 00:22:47.217 cap open goes back into like the 19, late 19 sixties was when it was 00:22:47.250 --> 00:22:51.926 started to get built and the cap is pumps. It, it's coming that water is 00:22:51.959 --> 00:22:58.315 flowing uphill to get it here. SRP is not SRP is grounding. Um And, and 00:22:58.348 --> 00:23:02.666 like I said, SRP is about a million acre feet. Um We have the right to 2.8 00:23:02.699 --> 00:23:07.545 million ft of Colorado River where the cap can deliver about 1.61 0.7 of 00:23:07.578 --> 00:23:12.357 that. The rest is used on the river. By the way, when I was talking about 00:23:12.390 --> 00:23:16.906 crops and people that's gonna change to get more water to Central Arizona. 00:23:16.939 --> 00:23:22.016 We're gonna need to start taking water. That has been the right of 00:23:22.049 --> 00:23:27.085 agriculture in Yuma and then we're gonna get more like California. But 00:23:27.118 --> 00:23:29.906 what I was, what I was starting to say is the final difference is we've 00:23:29.939 --> 00:23:34.825 been banking Colorado river water underground. So when the ce P got built 00:23:34.858 --> 00:23:38.285 the idea, it originally was gonna be the farmers would pay for it, 00:23:38.318 --> 00:23:41.976 whatever it costs to get it here and then the cities would slowly grow 00:23:42.009 --> 00:23:46.166 into using it. Well, this is a big thing built by the federal government. 00:23:46.199 --> 00:23:49.147 So it cost a whole lot more than people thought it was gonna cost, it was 00:23:49.180 --> 00:23:53.706 supposed to cost like 700 million and it cost more like 4.5 billion. And 00:23:53.739 --> 00:23:56.756 so the farmers couldn't afford it with the formulas that were used to 00:23:56.789 --> 00:24:02.575 calculate what they were supposed to pay. So when I was on the cap board, 00:24:02.608 --> 00:24:06.637 we had to come up with a way of resolving that problem. And the solution 00:24:06.670 --> 00:24:12.656 was to have cities buy down the price of water so we could give cap water 00:24:12.689 --> 00:24:17.045 to farmers so we could get them off the groundwater pumps, which they were 00:24:17.078 --> 00:24:23.196 using um federally subsidized electricity to pump ground water. So the 00:24:23.229 --> 00:24:26.176 federal government wanted the farmers off the pumps, but it was selling 00:24:26.209 --> 00:24:31.795 them below cost electricity to use the pumps makes no sense. There are 00:24:31.828 --> 00:24:37.897 lots of these weird ironies in western water. So the cities were willing 00:24:37.930 --> 00:24:43.526 to subsidize water for Arizona agriculture primarily to keep it away from 00:24:43.559 --> 00:24:48.295 California because California was using most of Arizona's share of the 00:24:48.328 --> 00:24:51.256 water at that point and they have the right to do that if we don't use it. 00:24:51.289 --> 00:24:55.776 But if we want to use it, we get to take it first. Well, what we did with 00:24:55.809 --> 00:25:01.785 this water then was to bank it in central Arizona using two different 00:25:01.818 --> 00:25:07.016 mechanisms. One is what's called direct recharge, which is, you pump the 00:25:07.049 --> 00:25:10.706 water here, you flow it out on the desert and you watch it seep into the 00:25:10.739 --> 00:25:16.805 ground. That's it. The other is you pump the water. Here, you sell it to a 00:25:16.838 --> 00:25:22.065 farmer below cost. He uses it to water his crops. But the water that he 00:25:22.098 --> 00:25:26.026 would otherwise have pumped from underneath the ground, you now count as 00:25:26.059 --> 00:25:30.726 being in lou recharge. So you treat it as if it was cap water that was 00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:35.847 banked underground. And in either case, you build up these huge reserves 00:25:35.880 --> 00:25:41.097 of groundwater through the combination of those two mechanisms. We've 00:25:41.130 --> 00:25:45.285 banked almost 9,000,008 acre feet of water underground in central Arizona 00:25:45.318 --> 00:25:51.206 , nobody else anywhere in the world can even come close to that. Um That's 00:25:51.239 --> 00:25:57.387 about if all water input to the Sun Corridor was cut off, it didn't rain 00:25:57.420 --> 00:26:03.535 srp could deliver zero cap could deliver zero. If you don't deliver any of 00:26:03.568 --> 00:26:08.055 that 9 million acre feed to agriculture, that's about 10 years worth of 00:26:08.088 --> 00:26:11.956 urban water supply. Now, you never do that because none of those will ever 00:26:11.989 --> 00:26:15.906 go to zero and you wouldn't want to deliver it at that rate and exhausted 00:26:15.939 --> 00:26:19.607 in 10 years. But, so when you see this stuff about how the drought is 00:26:19.640 --> 00:26:22.367 gonna hit Arizona worse than California, based on the fact that we're the 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:26.585 junior right holder. What really annoys me about that is that gets written 00:26:26.618 --> 00:26:31.347 up in the L A Times or the New York Times or somewhere else as if those of 00:26:31.380 --> 00:26:34.397 us in Arizona are so stupid. It never occurred to us. We were the junior 00:26:34.430 --> 00:26:38.416 right holder. We've known that for a really long time and we've been 00:26:38.449 --> 00:26:42.916 trying to protect against that eventuality. Calif the only significant 00:26:42.949 --> 00:26:46.315 amount of water. California has banked against the drought. They banked in 00:26:46.348 --> 00:26:50.246 Arizona because we did it for them, pay us a lot of money to do that, 00:26:50.279 --> 00:26:53.387 which is sort of useful. But, uh, and Nevada has done a ton of that 00:26:53.420 --> 00:26:57.867 because they're in much worse shape than we are. Um, so we've actually, it 00:26:57.900 --> 00:27:01.035 , it, you know, when you're embarrassed by telling people you're from 00:27:01.068 --> 00:27:04.506 Arizona because we're embarrassing about a lot of things. This is the one 00:27:04.539 --> 00:27:08.996 thing we've been really good at. We've done this really, really well. Um 00:27:09.029 --> 00:27:12.666 Trying to think what else would be of interest to you guys about R a lot 00:27:12.699 --> 00:27:17.117 or? Well, I think the distinction between CAP and SRP is really important 00:27:17.150 --> 00:27:22.377 and, you know, you, if you think about the Salt River Valley Water Users 00:27:22.410 --> 00:27:28.406 Association and how water businesses cropped up in the territorial period. 00:27:28.439 --> 00:27:33.335 In the early 20th century, the Users Association became the Salt River 00:27:33.368 --> 00:27:39.436 project was associated with the construction of Roosevelt dam of formed 00:27:39.469 --> 00:27:42.545 Lake Roosevelt in 1911. 00:27:42.578 --> 00:27:48.815 So, Srp and the canal system that brings water to the valley from the Salt 00:27:48.848 --> 00:27:56.377 River happened much earlier. Then you have the Colorado River Compact, 00:27:56.410 --> 00:28:00.617 which was the first multi state agreement that established water 00:28:00.650 --> 00:28:07.006 allocations amongst the Southwester States. And it was very controversial 00:28:07.039 --> 00:28:09.897 there, there's a lot of issues about whether they counted the amount of 00:28:09.930 --> 00:28:13.815 water correctly that actually flows through the Colorado River. But that 00:28:13.848 --> 00:28:16.936 was the first. The answer is they didn't. They thought there was a lot 00:28:16.969 --> 00:28:21.660 more than that was. Yeah, they messed up. Yeah, big time. And that started 00:28:21.693 --> 00:28:27.281 a basically 40 year process, 45 year process of controversy and little 00:28:27.314 --> 00:28:30.531 hassle. Let me, let me give you the numbers on that. So they, they made an 00:28:30.564 --> 00:28:34.031 assumption that the Colorado River has an average annual flow of 17.5 00:28:34.064 --> 00:28:38.926 million acre feet. Uh That is just completely wrong. It's more like 12 or 00:28:38.959 --> 00:28:42.795 13 probably we have now discovered much after the fact. But they took that 00:28:42.828 --> 00:28:48.456 17.5 million. They allocated 2.5 million to Mexico and the remaining 15 00:28:48.489 --> 00:28:53.295 million, they split 7.5 to the upper basin and 7.5 to the lower basin. The 00:28:53.328 --> 00:29:00.406 upper basin is uh Utah. Uh Colorado and New Mexico and a little piece of 00:29:00.439 --> 00:29:04.325 Arizona. But the line between upper and lower is Lee's ferry. So slightly 00:29:04.358 --> 00:29:10.026 into Arizona, the lower basin is Arizona, Nevada and California, 00:29:10.059 --> 00:29:14.236 there was then a further split in the Colorado River compact between 00:29:14.269 --> 00:29:19.706 Arizona, Nevada and California that gave California 4.4 million acre feet. 00:29:19.739 --> 00:29:24.565 Arizona 2.8 million ft and Nevada 300,000 acre feet. 00:29:24.598 --> 00:29:28.266 Arizona felt it got screwed. We thought we should get the same amount of, 00:29:28.299 --> 00:29:33.217 of water. California. And our argument for that was, first of all, the 00:29:33.250 --> 00:29:36.137 river flows through Arizona for 300 miles before it ever gets to 00:29:36.170 --> 00:29:41.325 California and Nevada. Secondly, there is water in the Colorado river that 00:29:41.358 --> 00:29:46.016 has flowed out of Arizona. The Bill Williams, um the Salt and the Verde 00:29:46.049 --> 00:29:49.075 from the Gila. The Gila is a tributary of the Colorado. The little 00:29:49.108 --> 00:29:52.756 Colorado is a tributary of the Colorado. So some of it's our water that, 00:29:52.789 --> 00:29:56.851 that the state. Now, the truth is hardly any of it. At the end of the day 00:29:56.884 --> 00:30:00.831 , the water that's in the river is from Colorado and Utah, it's from snow 00:30:00.864 --> 00:30:04.222 and the Rockies. But, but we thought that was a pretty good argument. 00:30:04.255 --> 00:30:07.871 There is not a single tributary of the Colorado river that flows out of 00:30:07.904 --> 00:30:12.651 California. Not one, not a stream, there's a little bit of sheep flow, 00:30:12.684 --> 00:30:17.637 maybe. So we were like, why should California get all of this? And their 00:30:17.670 --> 00:30:21.776 answer was We're California. What are you talking about? Uh, you know, 00:30:21.809 --> 00:30:25.147 we've been using it for a long time first in time, first and right, and we 00:30:25.180 --> 00:30:29.436 have a way more congressman than you do. You know, this is, this is the 19 00:30:29.469 --> 00:30:33.666 fifties. Uh We have like one congressman for when this happened. So we 00:30:33.699 --> 00:30:36.766 felt like got screwed when it was split up and we wouldn't ratify the 00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:42.736 compact for years. And that's what led to the, the famous lawsuit Arizona 00:30:42.769 --> 00:30:47.406 versus California, um which there's a, there's a good book uh came out 00:30:47.439 --> 00:30:52.206 about two years ago written by Jack August about Mark Wilmer. Um the 00:30:52.239 --> 00:30:56.746 lawyer who ultimately represented Arizona in uh Arizona versus California. 00:30:56.779 --> 00:31:01.835 So here's an interesting tidbit, the water in the Timby Town Lake. What 00:31:01.868 --> 00:31:05.627 is that, is that solar project water or Central Arizona Project water mix 00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:12.266 congregation, right? So legally, it is basically Central Arizona project 00:31:12.299 --> 00:31:18.785 water because since that is the river bottom, it didn't have rights to SRP 00:31:18.818 --> 00:31:23.676 water. It was never farmed. You couldn't farm in the river bottom. So when 00:31:23.709 --> 00:31:28.746 SRP was created, no water rights were assigned to the river. So when it 00:31:28.779 --> 00:31:31.196 was time to like fill the Tempe Town lake, everybody scratching their head 00:31:31.229 --> 00:31:35.967 , how are we gonna do this? Um I was on the cap board at the time and they 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:38.906 came to us and said, will you, will you cut us a deal to sell us cheap, 00:31:38.939 --> 00:31:43.295 cap water for this? And we said, sure, we'll give you cap water to fill it. 00:31:43.328 --> 00:31:47.666 So the initial filling of the lake was cap water delivered through the 00:31:47.699 --> 00:31:52.266 Sober Project system. The systems are inter t so you can deliver. Then 00:31:52.299 --> 00:31:58.186 what happens is when the dam burst or when you let water out of it and 00:31:58.219 --> 00:32:04.107 then you capture water flowing down into it. Um That is SRP water, but 00:32:04.140 --> 00:32:07.607 legally, it's still treated as cap water because it's replacement for the 00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:11.766 water that was spilled. So what happened now is the lake's been empty by 00:32:11.799 --> 00:32:15.825 pumping the water in and out and into the cap into the SRP canal system 00:32:15.858 --> 00:32:20.956 and it's been delivered to farmers. Um And so then SRP will replace that, 00:32:20.989 --> 00:32:25.315 but legally, it's still treated the cap water. You know, another 00:32:25.348 --> 00:32:30.736 interesting thing was uh Arizona, California was settled in 64. 00:32:30.769 --> 00:32:35.217 And then, then the effort was to fund the Central Arizona project which 00:32:35.250 --> 00:32:43.250 happened in 1968. The origin of the project studio for Rio Salado is 6667 00:32:44.670 --> 00:32:49.835 waters on everybody's mind. The, the, you know, you can see political 00:32:49.868 --> 00:32:53.035 cartoons in our collections from Reg Man and you can, you can see all 00:32:53.068 --> 00:32:57.166 these materials and news articles about the negotiate the fight with 00:32:57.199 --> 00:33:02.726 California. It was a huge moment in the sixties thinking about our future 00:33:02.759 --> 00:33:06.575 and who we were going to be as a state and how much that depended on water. 00:33:06.608 --> 00:33:11.256 So clearly, all this effort in Arizona versus California and Cap was a 00:33:11.289 --> 00:33:15.825 driver for thinking about this, this river bed and this river. And what 00:33:15.858 --> 00:33:18.147 would we do? 00:33:18.180 --> 00:33:23.476 What else you guys got questions, anything else you want to ask? 00:33:23.509 --> 00:33:28.075 Um Is, is there an effort to remove prior appropriation from the state or 00:33:28.108 --> 00:33:33.597 what's the status? Um Anytime you go to like a water or law seminar, 00:33:33.630 --> 00:33:39.426 there's a, there's conversations about the need for what a lot of change 00:33:39.459 --> 00:33:47.387 and adapt, but that will happen very slowly. Um, it, it, it, the law is 00:33:47.420 --> 00:33:55.420 largely intended to make it hard for things to change. The law is a tool 00:33:56.368 --> 00:34:01.736 of maintaining the status quo. Um That's why we care about stare decisis. 00:34:01.769 --> 00:34:06.706 That's why we use precedent. That's why judicial decisions are very 00:34:06.739 --> 00:34:10.227 constrained. That's why we don't like activist judges that are getting 00:34:10.260 --> 00:34:15.307 criticized all the time because the law is supposed to protect people's 00:34:15.340 --> 00:34:22.865 investments, people's expectations. Uh, business operations are, the law 00:34:22.898 --> 00:34:27.017 is supposed to be a break on society changing too quickly and too 00:34:27.050 --> 00:34:31.396 dramatically. Um, and that will be one of the hardest things to sort of 00:34:31.429 --> 00:34:38.345 slowly break down over time. It, it will change, but it could be 150 years 00:34:38.378 --> 00:34:41.497 for that to happen. 00:34:41.530 --> 00:34:45.046 There's a, a fabulous water law professor at the law school right now 00:34:45.079 --> 00:34:48.626 named Rhett Larson. Any of you wind up going to a su law school where you 00:34:48.659 --> 00:34:52.655 see something about Rhett Larson doing a talk. He's really good. Really 00:34:52.688 --> 00:34:55.394 cool. Guy, 00:34:55.427 --> 00:35:00.376 it's only been here like a year now. There's another interesting aspect 00:35:00.409 --> 00:35:05.747 about uh California using our water. Uh It takes a lot of water to run a 00:35:05.780 --> 00:35:11.807 power plant. I thinking water to get photo take power, but a power plant, 00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:18.345 a lot of water. Uh Calver takes a lot of water. It's the largest nuclear 00:35:18.378 --> 00:35:24.345 generating station in the world, I think. But because we make the power 00:35:24.378 --> 00:35:29.776 here, they use uh effluent from the city of Phoenix and Tempe and Mesa 00:35:29.809 --> 00:35:34.577 that flows down to the 91st Avenue plant, get some treatment and then the 00:35:34.610 --> 00:35:39.497 big pipe goes out to P Verde and they make electricity. That's why 00:35:39.530 --> 00:35:43.876 California likes that electricity. They're really buying our water when 00:35:43.909 --> 00:35:47.595 they get out that, that electricity. So they don't have to make 00:35:47.628 --> 00:35:51.595 electricity in California. Metropolitan Phoenix has one of the highest 00:35:51.628 --> 00:35:56.686 percentages of water reuse of any city in the world. Um So when you hear 00:35:56.719 --> 00:36:01.316 people talking about using more effluent, treated effluent and so on, 00:36:01.349 --> 00:36:05.517 we're like close to 100%. Now, the reason is pal Verde, that's where most 00:36:05.550 --> 00:36:09.967 of it goes. But it gets used to Paloverde and then it gets put back into 00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:13.706 the salt River bed where it is recharged, back into the aquifers. So we 00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:20.896 use it twice beyond flushing your toil. 00:36:20.929 --> 00:36:27.320 Well, I think that's excellent. All right, nice to meet youall