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Pinal Co. Water Issues Loom Large |
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Last week, about 500 people gathered at infilling southern Phoenix to discuss their visions about how Pinal County will fill out.
The process is already well under way along Hunt Highway — in a house-rich, job-poor manner which won’t fit the needs of future Arizonans, according to Portland-based planner John Fregonese, keynote speaker of the event at the Arizona Grand Resort.
A consultant on a master plan for the 275 square miles of state trust land east of Queen Creek and Florence known as Superstition Vistas, Fregonese predicts this and other parts of the “Sun Corridor” between Phoenix and Tucson will develop into a series of town cores offering work, residential and retail uses close together.
He said future growth patterns will be the product of trends just starting to emerge: aging populations, smaller households and ballooning fuel costs and the resulting demand for shrinking carbon footprints.
Growth will continue as an inevitable facet of life in Arizona as immigration helps fuel population growth nationwide, he said. Some 7.5 million people will live in the Phoenix area by 2060, with 2.6 million of that in the East Valley.
But he doesn’t think the workforce of the future will settle for half-hour-plus commutes. People will want to live closer to work as well as shopping and educational destinations, There will also be fewer families with children, which means an increased interest in multifamily housing.
The Tribune has the full story.
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SRP Opposes Prescott Valley Pumping |
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Verde News has the full story.
PRESCOTT VALLEY - In a new twist, the Salt River Project's latest move against local plans to pump water from the Big Chino Basin focuses heavily on Prescott Valley's involvement.
SRP, the Phoenix-area utility company that has senior water rights in the Verde River Basin, was among the several dozen entities and individuals to file objections recently to Prescott's application for an increase in its assured water supply.
While much of the complaint repeats previous SRP assertions about Prescott's authority to pump from the Big Chino Basin, it also brings into question Prescott Valley's rights to the imported water.
That is a notion that Prescott Valley town officials took exception to this week. In a late-Wednesday press conference, a group of town officials disputed both SRP's claims and the company's right to get involved in the process at all.
"They're really reaching, because they don't have standing," Prescott Valley Town Attorney Ivan Legler said, noting that the state process requires that objections to the designation come from within the Prescott Active Management Area.
The matter dates back to 2004, when the City of Prescott bought a portion of the JWK Ranch (later renamed the Big Chino Water Ranch) northwest of Paulden and partnered with Prescott Valley on costs, as well as future water allocations.
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The city of Phoenix is declaring its water supply clean and drug free.
Tests were conducted by an independent lab at each of Phoenix's six water-treatment plants. And Mayor Phil Gordon says the results showed no traces of pharmaceuticals while meeting all standards of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The city tested the water after a series of stories by The Associated Press said that pharmaceuticals have been identified in Lake Mead's water. Some of the lake's water reaches the Phoenix area by way of the Central Arizona Project canal.
The AP report said the chemicals were in tiny quantities.
Drugs are thought to enter the water supply after being ingested by people and passed into the sewage system. Other drugs get flushed into the system. No one knows whether exposure to small quantities of these drugs can cause problems.
The AP has the full story.
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Is the Drought finally over? |
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Well, the "normallly dry" Salt River is running and with the coming snow melt, you ain't seen nothin' yet...but is the drought actually over?
Check out this ariticle from today's Republic.
"For parched state, wet winter means quenched thirst
Winter storms plastered Arizona's high country with snow and soaked the lower deserts with rain until the ground was almost sloshing, but that was just the first half of an increasingly wet story.
As temperatures rise this week, the snow will start to melt, gushing down streams and rivers into reservoirs that, in many cases, are already full. The overflow on the Salt and Verde rivers alone could exceed a year's supply of water for Valley residents.
The runoff will ease drought conditions across much of the state, rejuvenating parched forests and rangelands and replenishing groundwater aquifers. Whether the winter has ended the drought, now more than a decade old, probably won't be known for another year or more. It's already clear that drought conditions will persist on the Colorado River.
The bringer of the bounty was almost certainly El Niño, an ocean-warming phenomenon that typically steers wet weather across Arizona and New Mexico. Storms have delivered nearly record rain and snow in some areas, with precipitation totals as high as three and four times the seasonal average."
Click Here to Read the Whole Thing. |
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In the desert, arguments opposing the city's proposed graywater-harvesting ordinance simply don't hold water.
The City Council should acknowledge that fact at its meeting today and pass the measure, which would require that all new homes built in Tucson after June 1, 2010, be plumbed for graywater-recovery systems.
The arguments in favor of the water-conservation measure are compelling. The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, which initially objected to the proposal, now supports it.
Graywater systems conserve used household water so that it can be re-used outdoors. The Water Conservation Alliance of Southern Arizona says a graywater system can meet all of a typical household's outdoor water needs if it has low-water-use landscaping.
"Gray" water comes from showers, bathtubs, bathroom sinks and laundry rooms — but not from toilets and kitchen sinks.
The ordinance would require graywater plumbing only on new-home construction, and if a homeowner builds an addition with a new bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, the Star's Rob O'Dell reported Sunday. Graywater plumbing, or stub-outs, would also be required in new guesthouses.
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