Conservationists sue to protect San Pedro ground water

PHOENIX (CN) — Conservationists sued Arizona’s governor and director of water resources Thursday, demanding they revoke a guaranteed water certificate from a 7,000-home development project they say will illegally siphon groundwater from the last free-flowing river in the Southwest.

Arizona’s Department of Water Resources approved the development’s certificate in 2013 based on the availability of groundwater congressionally assigned to the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

Using the water for a commercial and residential housing development instead will cause irreversible harm to fragile ecosystems along the river, the plaintiffs say in a new lawsuit brought against Governor Katie Hobbs, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, its director Tom Buschatzke and Pueblo Del Sol Water Company.

“Governor Hobbs and her water department’s refusal to protect the San Pedro condemns the watershed to death and will leave unknowing homeowners with an uncertain water supply and property that’s all but worthless,” Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release. “It’s unconscionable that they’re willing to hand a blank check to wealthy developers at the expense of a rare, priceless and fragile ecosystem and everyday Arizonans.”

California housing developer Castle & Cooke and Pueblo Del Sol Water Company began planning a new community in Sierra Vista — just five miles from the San Pedro River — more than a decade ago. But environmental nonprofit Earthjustice and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management moved to block the development to protect the conservation area, a 26-square mile patch of land home to more than 100 species of birds.

The case went to the Arizona Supreme Court, which allowed the transfer of water rights in a 4-3 decision in 2018. The justices ruled that when ensuring a 100-year water supply for a new development, the state doesn’t have to account for unquantified federally reserved water rights.

Congress reserved water rights for the conservation area in 1988, but because those rights were never quantified in stature, the high court left the interpretation up to the water resources department.

Dissenting justices noted that “this interpretation defeats the adequate water supply provision’s manifest purpose to proactively protect consumers in Arizona before they purchase property.”

The winds shifted in the San Pedro’s favor in August 2023, when Maricopa County Judge Mark H. Brain issued a ruling quantifying water rights for the conservation area. The ruling mandated that groundwater levels be maintained at nine monitoring wells within the area. Two of those wells have already dropped below their required elevation, and two others are close to being in violation, the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The state Supreme Court acknowledged in its 2018 decision that when federally reserved water rights are quantified, water department officials must respect them. But a year later, nothing has changed. The center filed a complaint with the governor and water resources department in July, but never received an answer.

“It’s been a year since the San Pedro water rights were finally quantified and since it’s been known that they were already being violated by over-pumping in Sierra Vista, yet Governor Hobbs and Buschatzke have done nothing to reevaluate and revoke Pueblo Del Sol’s designation,” Silver said in the press release. “They’ve chosen to leave the San Pedro River unprotected and future Sierra Vista-area homeowners vulnerable to the inevitable catastrophe of their taps running dry.”

This is the second lawsuit the center has filed against the state over the San Pedro River. The group sued in June after Hobbs and Buschatzke ignored a petition from the San Pedro Alliance to create an active management area in the Upper San Pedro Basin.

“Governor Hobbs is making a mockery of Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act by refusing to put any restrictions on San Pedro River-killing groundwater pumping,” Silver said in June. “Her inaction is causing an existential crisis that will lead to the demise of the river and the plants and animals whose existence depends on its flows.”

The Arizona Department of Water Resources declined to comment on the lawsuit. The governor’s office hasn’t replied to a request.

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