Arizona Daily Sun
05 September 2010
It's been said
that having choices can make life more interesting but also more
difficult.
Thanks to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's handling of the Snowbowl
snowmaking permit, the Flagstaff City Council has experienced
that truism in spades.
Thursday's 5-2
vote by the council not to sell drinking water to Snowbowl came
only after reopening one of the more divisive decisions by a
previous council in 2002. The fact that the vote returns the
issue to the contractually obligated status quo of selling
reclaimed wastewater for snowmaking did not make it any easier,
The USDA option
to use subsidized drinking water also opened to public scrutiny
secret negotiations the city had been conducting with the Hopi
Tribe over a future water pipeline easement from Red Gap Ranch
east of Flagstaff. And the option forced various tribal
officials to clarify their position as opposing snowmaking using
any water source—potable or not—that enhanced the
viability of recreational skiing on the Peaks.
The drinking
water option gave Snowbowl a new choice but also undercut the
argument that the improvements would be entirely privately
funded. It had to choose between keeping snowmaking financially
independent or being the beneficiary of an $11 million federal
grant and getting out from under the time-consuming lawsuit
questioning the safety of reclaimed wastewater. It chose the
latter, and it is still pursuing a reconsideration vote by the
council.
SHAKY
POLICYMAKING FRAMEWORK
The biggest
challenge posed by the drinking water choice, however, was to
the city's policymaking framework on current and future
municipal water use. It exposed the lack of any binding city
policy or rule on the sale of potable water to outside companies
or agencies. Further, there are no benchmarks on what level of
commercial water use is considered acceptable and what isn't,
even for companies inside the city. Nor is there a future level
set for additional water capacity that might allow some
flexibility in selling water outside the city as part of a
regional economic development strategy.
City officials
contend there is a new policy coming soon on potable water sales
outside the city to supplement a nonbinding council resolution
passed more than a decade ago. But we wonder how soon that
policy would have been developed had it not been for the USDA
option.
The larger issue
is how and when the city will develop specific goals and an
action plan for new water sources to respond to commercial
requests from within the city, not just outside it. If it had
not been Snowbowl but a current large industrial water user such
as Joy Cone or SCA Tissue coming to the city with a plan to
expand jobs in exchange for more potable water, we don't think
they would have been turned away without a specific calculation
showing just how much new water capacity the city expected to
have in 20 years and how much was available for industrial and
commercial growth.
IRRIGATION
USE THE PROBLEM
As it is,
Snowbowl's request for potable water didn't really serve to
trigger a long overdue discussion of the main reason the city
must develop new water capacity: a sharply increased aquifer
drawdown during the dry months of May and June. Snowbowl wanted
to use more water during the wet months of December through
March, yet there was never any analysis of how that specific
request was not likely to trigger the need for a new pipeline
from Red Gap or other infrastructure expansion. We have long
wondered why the city doesn't consider investing in a
residential reclaimed water system that would address excessive
landscape irrigation with potable water in May and June before
spending more than $100 million on a pipeline from Red Gap.
Finally, another
aspect of the USDA option is the potential Pandora's Box the
city staff have opened by setting up a new class of water called
"recovered reclaimed," which is drinking water that includes
well water from a part of the aquifer infiltrated by discharged
reclaimed wastewater. The term turns out to be a distinction
without a difference—the city's drinking water pipeline
includes water from all sources.
Current city law
prohibits golf courses from using "potable" water for
irrigation. But if there is now a new category, "recovered
reclaimed," does the ban have to be amended or can golf courses,
just like Snowbowl, apply to use this water for irrigation?
IS BLENDED
WATER SAFE?
The city's
distinction has also drawn new attention to something that has
been going on ever since the new well in Continental was drilled
over the aquifer receiving the discharged A+ effluent: The
city's drinking water now has trace elements of hormones and
other inorganics that were not present when only water from Lake
Mary, the Woody Mountain wells and the Inner Basin was being
used. How long will it be before someone demands that the water
from the Continental well not be blended with other sources
until the risks of hormone ingestion, even at trace levels, are
better understood?
So again,
choices are nice to have, but they come with burdens, too. The
city council, by choosing to consider the USDA drinking water
option, has opened the door on a host of other water-related
issues that need resolution, even if they didn't, in the end,
take the USDA up on its offer.
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