Ridenbaugh Press/Water Rights

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on April 26 signed a bill which explicitly lets the city of Prescott use groundwater from the Big Chino Aquifer, a major development for a city heavily reliant on groundwater.

Senate Bill 1445 provides an exemption from a 1980 law on groundwater which ordinarily bans interbasin transfers. It says that “a city or town in the Prescott Active Management Area may withdraw and transport 8,068 acre-feet per year of groundwater.”

The key additions to the statute were:

45-543. Transportation between sub-basins or away from an active management area; damages; non-irrigation grandfathered right not associated with retired irrigated land; service area withdrawals; permit; exempt well

45-555. Transportation of groundwater withdrawn in Big Chino sub-basin of the Verde River groundwater basin to initial active management area; exception

By the time it was signed, the bill was not especially controversial. It followed years of discussion and resolution between Prescott and the Salt River Project, which manages much of the water in the area.

“We could go on for years litigating this issue, and in the end we wouldn’t have an answer about the (Upper Verde River) impacts” from Prescott’s Big Chino pumping, said Greg Kornrumph, analyst for the project’s Water Rights and Contracts Division, told the Prescott Daily Courier on April 28.

In Arizona, well operators ordinarily – as in most places – obtain water rights for groundwater. But there are exceptions. In the “subflow” area of the Verde River, for example – an area where the river is deemed to flow in subsurface areas – a water well operator may (counterintuitively) need a surface water right.

That subject has engulfed 11 Verde Valley water users in years of litigation, ever since in 2004 the Salt River Project filed suit against them for improperly using river water.

Now that may be coming to a close.

Eight of the family operations have settled with the project. The Verde Independent reported on October 3 that, of the other three, court decisions may be coming soon, and in two of the cases at least, possibly in their favor. Judge Eddward Ballinger said that he had found probable cause for dismissing two of the cases, though he had not yet acted and wanted more information; the fate of the third case remained unclear.

Court action on the third case was expected within a few days.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Andrew Klein on February 3 held that the city of Prescott could be seriously damaged from a postponment of legal action on its claims for assured water. The Salt River Project, seeking a delay, would not be harmed.

With that in mind, the judge said the case, revolving around Prescott’s pumping rights, will go forward next week.

Prescott maintains it has the right to 8,067 acre-feet of ground water located in the Big Chino sub-basin.

But Salt river and the Yavapai-Apache and Fort McDowell Yavapai nation Indian tribes, claimed they were affected because of their rights to Verde River water, which may be caught up in the Big Chino groundwater system.

In his new ruling – which didn’t get into settling all of the water rights issues involved – Klein held, “The problem with this analysis is that the subject of the administrative hearing in Prescott on Feb. 9-11 is not about SRP’s or the Nations’ downstream . . . rights to the Verde River, but rather it’s a hearing regarding application for Assured Water Supply.”
[see the Prescott [AZ] Daily Courier, February 3.]

Salt River Project (SRP) and the Town of Payson have formalized an agreement that will allow Payson to gain access to a portion of the water supply from the C.C. Cragin Reservoir, formerly the Blue Ridge Reservoir, and gives certainty to Payson’s current and future water supplies.

A provision of the federal Arizona Water Settlements Act of 2004 created an opportunity for Payson to utilize surface water from the C.C. Cragin Reservoir. The agreement between SRP and Payson was approved May 6 in a special Payson Town Council meeting following unanimous approval May 5 by the governing boards of SRP. Execution of the agreement is to take place later this week.
John Sullivan, associate general manager of SRP’s Water Group, said SRP and Payson have been engaged in discussions for more than two years regarding the terms and conditions under which Payson could gain access to a portion of the Cragin water supply. Those discussions, he said, led to this agreement that would resolve SRP’s concerns over the impact of Payson’s groundwater pumping on National Forest lands originally set aside to protect the water resources of SRP shareholders.
Among the key elements of the agreement:
SRP will sever and transfer a portion of the water-use right to Payson, which will permit the delivery of water to Payson for use within the town’s water-service area. SRP will retain the remaining water rights for the benefit of its shareholders.
The average annual water-diversion right from the reservoir is limited to 11,000 acre-feet, and up to 3,000 acre-feet will be made available to Payson each year based on reservoir storage conditions.
The agreement creates a partnership between SRP and Payson whereby SRP and Payson share in the capital, operation and maintenance expenditures related to the reservoir, pumping and water-transmission facilities. SRP and Payson will jointly develop the annual operation plan for the C. C. Cragin facility.
Groundwater pumping by Payson will be limited to a “safe-yield” amount from the town’s pumping facilities, and Payson will not be permitted to develop wells within the National Forest. The agreement allows for pumping in excess of the safe-yield amount under certain circumstances, including extended drought.
In February 2005, Salt River Project and Phelps Dodge Corp. signed a historic water agreement as part of the Gila River Indian Water Rights Settlement that settled water-rights issues and allowed for the transfer of Blue Ridge Reservoir from Phelps Dodge to SRP. The agreement was part of a long history of water agreements between Phelps Dodge and SRP that helped manage Arizona’s water supplies.
As SRP’s newest lake, Blue Ridge Reservoir officially became part of the Salt River Federal Reclamation Project on Sept. 30, 2005, when title to the facility was transferred from SRP to the United States. The dam and reservoir were then renamed C.C. Cragin Dam and Reservoir in recognition of Charles Calhoun Cragin, its second general superintendent and a visionary leader of the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association from 1920 to 1933.

The C.C. Cragin project consists of a number of facilities, including a dam and reservoir, diversion tunnel and pump shaft, pumping plant, priming reservoir, pipeline, electrical transmission line and a generating plant. The project is in Coconino County, about 25 miles north of Payson atop the Mogollon Rim in the Coconino National Forest.

SRP is the largest provider of water and power to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, delivering about 1 million acre-feet of water to a 248,000-acre area.

Contact:  Jeffrey P. Lane (602) 236-2500 _Jeff.Lane@srpnet.com May 15 Salt River Project

Salt River Project this weekend will discontinue water releases at Granite Reef Diversion Dam, the first time since Jan. 27 that excess water will not be spilled into the normally dry Salt River.
Charlie Ester, manager of SRP’s Water Resource Operations, said most of the snowpack on the Verde River watershed has melted and that this week, for the first time since late January, the Verde River inflow has dropped to less than the water order for the Valley.
A portion of the water order has already been switched from the Verde River to the Salt River in an effort to capture all future spring storm runoff, Ester said, and virtually all of the snowmelt that remains is primarily on the Salt watershed. SRP’s reservoir system today is 96 percent full, compared to 62 percent full a year ago.
SRP this week informed the City of Phoenix and the Maricopa County Department of Transportation of its decision to stop water releases so they can determine when to re-open road crossings on the Salt River at McKellips Road and 67th and 99th avenues.
Ester said Roosevelt Lake, which holds about 70 percent of SRP’s storage capacity, has been filling all spring and has reached 95 percent of capacity. He said Roosevelt Lake is currently less than a foot from its high-water mark in 2005, the last wet winter in central Arizona, and is 4 feet from full with about 83,000 acre-feet of available space.
Runoff now captured behind Theodore Roosevelt Dam is filling new water-conservation storage space, which is made up of 272,500 acre-feet of available space that is allocated for the Valley cities of Phoenix, Glendale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler and Scottsdale. This is only the second instance in which water has been stored in the new conservation space since Roosevelt Dam was raised 77 feet during a modification project that was completed in 1996. Whether Roosevelt Lake fills completely this spring will depend on temperatures over the next several days and future spring storms on the watershed, Ester said. Additional spring precipitation and above-normal temperatures could result in a faster pace of melting snow, which could fill Roosevelt and possibly prompt additional water releases into the Salt River through the Valley.
Since the productive rains starting in the fall, SRP has spilled more than 150,000 acre-feet of water into the Salt River below Granite Reef Dam, primarily because of limited capacity at Horseshoe and Bartlett reservoirs on the Verde River.
The 2007-2008 releases, which peaked at 12,000 cubic feet per second at Bartlett Dam on the Verde River and 23,000 cfs – including local inflows – over Granite Reef Dam below the confluence of the Salt and Verde rivers, were the first into the Salt River through the Phoenix area since 2005 and only the third release over Granite Reef since Roosevelt Dam was modified.
SRP water serves the lands within its service territory in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area that includes all or a portion of the water needs for the cities or towns of Avondale, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, Tempe, Tolleson and Scottsdale.
SRP is the largest raw-water supplier in the Phoenix area, normally delivering more than 1 million acre-feet annually.
March 21 Jeffrey P. Lane?SRP Media Relations