Phoenix, February 23 – Arizona will fail to meet its goal of having sustainable water resources by 2025 unless the state takes concrete steps to improve groundwater management, a new report by the Grand Canyon Institute concludes.

The report, “Groundwater: Getting to Safe Yield by 2025,” urges Arizona lawmakers to act quickly “with vigor and purpose” to ensure the state fulfills its commitment to groundwater management to remain “water smart.”

“Arizona’s need for effective groundwater management is critical, in the face of decades-long drought, a growing population and effects of a changing climate,” said the report by Grand Canyon Institute Fellow Karen L. Smith, PhD.  An adjunct professor at ASU, Smith previously served as Water Quality Director at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

“Safe Yield” refers to a goal set by Arizona’s landmark 1980 Groundwater Management Act (GMA). The law defined safe yield as using no more groundwater that can be replaced, either naturally or artificially through recharge. The GMA set a 2025 deadline for achieving “safe yield” in three active management areas – Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott.

The Grand Canyon Institute Report said there have been notable success stories since the law was passed. For example, municipal water users have seen substantial population and business increases while using less groundwater than in 1980.

Yet the report found that flawed assumptions in key elements of the GMA “threaten the viability of achieving safe yield” by 2025.

“The largest of these was the belief that urbanization would occur on agricultural lands, using less groundwater, and that direct industrial demand would grow primarily within city water service areas,” the report notes. Instead, much growth has occurred on desert lands outside municipal service areas, with groundwater as its supply. Other problems arise from a lack of regulation concerning exempt domestic wells where the volume of groundwater pumped is largely unknown. The number of these exempt wells has grown and pose particular challenges in the Prescott AMA.

The report recommends the Legislature consider bills to:

• Require industrial users of groundwater not served by a municipal provider to use renewable supplies and replenish mined groundwater.
• Reduce the amount of groundwater pumped from exempt wells to 20 gallons per minute (gpm) from the current limit of 35 gpm.
• Provide the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District with needed flexibility to refuse to add new land and service areas to its replenishment obligation until it has been able to secure sufficient renewable supplies for its existing obligations, including any new authority to serve existing industrial use.

“We have achieved much in our efforts to use water sustainably and reduce our mining of groundwater,” the report notes. “As we consider a future where recurring drought and diminished surface water supplies make this more difficult, and the temptation to scurry for water supplies commands all our attention, we must first remember our commitment to safe yield.”

Millions already spent to remedy effects of earth fissures and the “untold cost of deepening wells and poorer water quality are stark reminders of the negative effects of groundwater overdraft and what failure to achieve safe yield may mean,” the report states.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization, is a centrist think tank led by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers,  economists, community leaders and academicians. The Grand Canyon Institute serves as an independent voice reflecting a pragmatic approach to addressing economic, fiscal, budgetary and taxation issues confronting Arizona.

Read the entire report here.