{"id":1157,"date":"2024-01-16T01:30:14","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T01:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1157"},"modified":"2024-01-16T02:52:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T02:52:08","slug":"environment_detail_7","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1157","title":{"rendered":"ENVIRONMENT_DETAIL_7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\">ENVIRONMENT<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\"><strong>JANUARY 9, 202<\/strong>4<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Water Loophole That Leaves Arizonans Parched\u2014and Developers Richer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWe could find ourselves with many more communities\u2026in the same situation.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>JAKE BITTLE<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"990\" height=\"556\" src=\"http:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Buckeye-housing-aerial-e1704402997481-copy-1.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1197\" style=\"width:760px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Buckeye-housing-aerial-e1704402997481-copy-1.webp 990w, https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Buckeye-housing-aerial-e1704402997481-copy-1-300x168.webp 300w, https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Buckeye-housing-aerial-e1704402997481-copy-1-768x431.webp 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>Mario Tama\/Getty\/Grist<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>When a small Arizona<\/strong>\u00a0community called\u00a0Rio Verde Foothills\u00a0lost its water supply one year ago, forcing locals to skip showers and eat off paper plates, it became a\u00a0poster child\u00a0for\u00a0unwise desert development. The rural neighborhood of about 2,000 people north of Phoenix had relied on trucked-in water deliveries from the nearby city of Scottsdale, but the city elected to stop deliveries to conserve its own water amid\u00a0a climate-fueled drought on the Colorado River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, after months of public debate over how to resolve the crisis in Rio Verde Foothills, the state government approved a deal that will\u00a0restore permanent water access\u00a0to the beleaguered community, albeit with much higher bills than residents are used to. But when the new legislative session begins next week, the Republican-led chamber may actually weaken the standards that govern new development, rather than tightening them, clearing the way for thousands more homes to pop up on water-insecure outskirts of Phoenix and Tucson.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe broader solutions are tougher, and people may not be ready to contemplate what really fixing the problem would require,\u201d said Priya Sundareshan, a Democratic state senator who represents part of Tucson.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Arizona developers build six or more homes on a tract of land, they have to demonstrate that they can supply water to those homes for at least 100 years. This rule exists to protect home buyers from the kind of land fraud that was notorious in the state for decades, but over time some landowners have found a way around it. The developers of so-called \u201cwildcat\u201d subdivisions split large parcels of land into smaller chunks and sell hundreds of those chunks off one by one, skirting the requirement to ensure a long-term water supply.&nbsp;\u201cIt\u2019s been an exhausting, exhausting fight for this community, and people are not happy with how much it costs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rio Verde Foothills is one such subdivision. Many residents of the neighborhood have residential wells that pump water from underground. But because there isn\u2019t much water in the area\u2019s aquifers, many others rely on trucks that deliver water from the city of Scottsdale, which has rights to water from the Colorado River. When Scottsdale shut off the water last year, Rio Verde had nowhere to turn for substitute supplies: There was no spare groundwater, and all the water from the Colorado River was spoken for. Locals who found alternate water haulers had to pay monthly bills that were larger than their mortgage payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the media frenzy around Rio Verde Foothills reached a fever pitch last summer, the\u00a0state legislature passed a bill\u00a0that forced Scottsdale to provide water to the neighborhood through 2025. A few months later, a state regulator\u00a0approved\u00a0a\u00a0long-term agreement\u00a0between the community and a large utility called Epcor, which agreed to build a new water standpipe in the neighborhood and import a new water supply from elsewhere in Phoenix. Rio Verde Foothills residents will pay for the $12 million project through water bills that could be double or triple current rates. The deal also limits future growth in the neighborhood, allowing for just 150 additional homes to access the standpipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been an exhausting, exhausting fight for this community, and people are not happy with how much it costs,\u201d said John Hornewer, a Rio Verde resident who runs the neighborhood\u2019s largest water hauling company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the state legislature\u2019s fix doesn\u2019t address the larger problems presented by wildcat subdivisions. While Democrats and some Republicans in the legislature sought to add language that would have limited when and how developers can exploit the wildcat loophole, they couldn\u2019t get enough support to send it to the governor\u2019s desk. Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs initially held out for a fix to the loophole\u2014she\u00a0vetoed an initial bill in May\u00a0that didn\u2019t tackle the wildcat issue\u2014but she ultimately\u00a0signed\u00a0a Rio Verde-focused bill that reached her desk the following month, acknowledging that the neighborhood needed immediate help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe bill did not do anything to fix the underlying problem,\u201d said Sundareshan, the state senator from Tucson. \u201cWe could find ourselves with many more communities\u2026in the same situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hobbs has continued to push for broader reform on the wildcat issue. Last year she created a \u201cwater policy council\u201d made up of experts and industry leaders and tasked it with alleviating the state\u2019s water woes, including the wildcat loophole. The council\u00a0released its final recommendations in December, calling on the legislature to\u00a0clamp down on these subdivisions\u00a0and give local governments more power to regulate them. It isn\u2019t clear how many such subdivisions exist, but they have been popping up outside Phoenix and Tucson for\u00a0at least\u00a0two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Democratic lawmakers will make another push once the state\u2019s legislative session starts next week, but\u00a0Hobbs\u2019s proposed reforms\u00a0still face stiff opposition. Many members of the state legislature oppose more government involvement in water regulations, and the state\u2019s home building lobby has fought against previous efforts to clamp down on the kind of lot-splitting that enables wildcat development.\u201cIf the legislature and the governor\u2019s office don\u2019t agree\u2026that would be very devastating to our housing affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s an appetite for [reform], but I think that will be lost in the shuffle,\u201d said John Kavanagh, a Republican state senator who represents the Rio Verde Foothills area. \u201cThe home builders will be aggressively lobbying against a lot-split bill, and you\u2019ve got some members with a more libertarian slant who believe in the right to property being almost unlimited.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, home builders are now pushing the legislature to move in the other direction, arguing that the 100-year water supply standard is holding back the state\u2019s economic growth. Back in June, Hobbs\u2019s administration\u00a0paused new water supply approvals\u00a0in the Phoenix area, declaring that the city\u2019s aquifers didn\u2019t have enough water to support future development over the next century. This has left several major development projects in limbo, with builders unable to move forward on tens of thousands of homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hobbs\u2019s administration has since moved to loosen the moratorium in response to protest from the real estate industry, and regulators may soon allow builders in\u00a0fast-growing suburbs like Buckeye\u00a0to resume construction on stalled projects. But the state\u2019s builders are seeking more comprehensive changes to the 100-year water supply standard: They argue that lawmakers should create an incentive for replacing water-intensive crop fields with residential neighborhoods, which require far less water than large-scale agriculture. The builders also argue that lawmakers should tweak the state\u2019s model for calculating groundwater shortages, which they say is too pessimistic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf the legislature and the governor\u2019s office don\u2019t agree to the necessary changes to resolve this issue this year, that would be very devastating to our housing affordability, our housing supply, and our economy,\u201d said Spencer Kamps, the vice president of legislative affairs for the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The future of the 100-year requirement is likely to take center stage this year, along with a parallel debate over how to regulate the kind of intensive groundwater pumping that has dried up wells and caused land to sink in\u00a0rural areas such as Cochise County. That issue became so contentious last year that two members of Hobbs\u2019s water policy council with ties to the agriculture industry, which is responsible for some of the most aggressive pumping,\u00a0resigned\u00a0before the council even finished its recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Until the legislature reforms the wildcat subdivision statute, though, there\u2019s nothing to stop developers from creating more vulnerable neighborhoods in the middle of the desert. Hornewer, the Rio Verde Foothills water hauler, said he\u2019s sure his neighborhood\u2019s crisis will play out again somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s probably already happening,\u201d he told&nbsp;<em>Grist<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Water Loophole That Leaves Arizonans Parched\u2014and Developers Richer When a small Arizona\u00a0community called\u00a0Rio Verde Foothills\u00a0lost its water supply one year ago, forcing locals to skip showers and eat off paper plates, it became a\u00a0poster child\u00a0for\u00a0unwise desert development. The rural neighborhood of about 2,000 people north of Phoenix had relied on trucked-in water deliveries from&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1157\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ENVIRONMENT_DETAIL_7<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":523,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"on","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1201,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1157\/revisions\/1201"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}