ARIZONA MEGA-DROUGHT: A Technical Paper State Surface Water Protection Program: Environmental, Social, and Economic Cost/Benefit Technical Paper

Intro: The Environmental, Social, and Economic Cost/Benefit Technical Paper outlines the environmental, social and economic (ESE) cost/benefit analysis ADEQ will use to list/delist waters as part of SWPP and apply water quality standards at specific levels.

ADEQ invites stakeholders to join the following virtual meeting to discuss the Surface Water Protection Program (SWPP) Environmental, Social, and Economic Cost/Benefit Technical Paper: Date: Monday, May 23, 2022 Time: 12 – 2 p.m. Location: Online and by phone via GotoWebinar | Register > After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The Environmental, Social, and Economic Cost/Benefit Technical Paper outlines the environmental, social and economic (ESE) cost/benefit analysis ADEQ will use to list/delist waters as part of SWPP and apply water quality standards at specific levels. At a high level, this paper addresses: ADEQ’s process to develop a methodology to formulate an appropriate ESE cost/benefit analysis for SWPP implementation Elements to be considered in a water quality benefit/cost modeling process  A modeling framework for generating water quality benefit/cost estimates  An overview of benefit/cost valuation methodologies A forecast of how ADEQ’s ESE model will function Click to View/Download the Technical Paper >   We appreciate your continued support, participation and feedback as ADEQ continues to develop the rules for the SWPP. For more information, visit azdeq.gov/AZPDESStakeholderMeetings   If you have questions, please contact: David Lelsz, Ph.D. Program Manager, Water Quality Division 602-771-4651 Lelsz.David@azdeq.gov About ADEQ Under the Environmental Quality Act of 1986, the Arizona State Legislature established the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in 1987 as the state agency for protecting and enhancing public health and the environment of Arizona. For more information, visit azdeq.gov.

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How will 1 million people get water in Arizona’s newest city?

Now that's A GREAT QUESTION in this arid place named Arizona - "We cannot allow others to call us, as Andrew Ross did in his 2011 book Bird on Fire, “the world’s least sustainable place 

So who do they turn to provide information: Grady Gammage and Mike Hutchinson - two people that have been the subject on many posts on this blog:

Looks like Gammage is changing his pitch. Here are some extracts

1

What is the appropriate density for cities in the desert? How will autonomous vehicles affect development patterns?  . . .

We are already doing a lot of these things. Besides moving on the drought contingency plan, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Salt River Project and Central Arizona Project have been aggressively pursuing new water management techniques and the acquisition of additional resources. 

We cannot allow others to call us, as Andrew Ross did in his 2011 book Bird on Fire, “the world’s least sustainable place 

We have always marketed our climate. 

We just need to adjust the pitch. 

 

This is already happening with the increasing relocations of financial service and insurance business and call centers to Arizona . . . CAN WE FIND OUR SWAGGER?

Arizona has always used the power of government – collective action – to manage water supplies in a challenging and arid place. 

Our past was all about managing water to make this place possible. 

Now our future must be all about managing climate to make it sustainable. ???????????????????????????????????????

In that activity may we find quiet confidence, and maybe a bit of a swagger.

Link > AZ Repub Op-Ed Opinion Piece 01 Jan 2019

[Image credit: Grady Gammage Jr. outside Gammage Auditorium in Tempe on December 20, 2018. (Photo: Cheryl Evans/The Republic)

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PRIVATIZING WATER RIGHTS --

It's the most precious commodity here in the desert, and can be bought and sold

Banking on Drought: Private Companies See Profits in Southwest ...

Phoenix New Times-Feb 28, 2019

Over the course of two decades, Vidler Water Company, where she is CEO, had spent nearly $100 million in Arizona on water, land, permits, ...

________________________________________________________________________

Here's an Op-Ed Opinion piece published back in August 2014 in Arizona Republic

Who appointed me 'water czar?' Sure wasn't me

Grady Gammage Jr.

Gammage: Researchers put a weird spin on my views. But they raise a good point about how Arizona chooses to use its water.

To the contrary, my entire point in every single thing I've ever said or written is that we need a citizenry that cares more and understands more about water issues.

This does not mean panicking because the New York Times thinks Phoenix will run out of water as soon as shortages are declared on the Colorado. It does mean understanding that a drier future means we need to start making tougher choices about what we do with the water we have.

 

"Watering the Sun Corridor," the Morrison Institute report I worked on in 2011, was an effort to improve public understanding and get people thinking about the need to make choices . .

Right now, our system views all agriculture as equal in water terms, and leaves priority between crops up to the marketplace. Perhaps we should debate drawing finer distinctions about what is grown with water resources.

Everything I have written about water is intended to provoke a deeper and more meaningful dialogue about this subject. . . Just don't call me a water czar unless I get at least a scepter."

 

2 November 27, 2012

Thinking about water
by Jon Talton

"The Arizona Republic's Shaun McKinnon did a fine job of using the breach in the CAP canal to provide a primer on the system and some of its challenges (here, here and here). This blog has written extensively on water and Arizona, but while a few people are paying attention, let me make a few essential points:

• The Colorado River is over-subscribed. There are, as the water geeks say, too many straws sucking from the river. . .

• Arizona lacks an honest audit of its water resources, trustworthy regulation or curiosity about the effects of climate change. The Real Estate Industrial Complex wishes it thus.

This way, the Ponzi scheme can be kept going a little longer, or so they think.

An entire edifice of "experts" exists to reassure and explain away. A darker legion ensures that subdivisions, even giant ones, are moved along the permitting process even if they lack water . . . Much of the techno-magic thrown around is sheer hokum. The reality is that the architects of the 100-year-supply chimera just assumed they would be dead before the bill came due.

> The bottom line is that sprawled, single-family house subdivision urban Arizona is not sustainable, much less one adding a million people or doubling in size or whatever the latest boosterish nonsense is peddled.

The business model of population growth won't work.

Even before the consequences of climate change came roaring at us, the United Nations warned of the destabilizing effects of water shortages in the 21st century. . . " 

Link > https://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2012/11/thinking-about-water.html 

 

3

“In honor of our 50th anniversary, we are recognizing individuals and organizations that prioritize sustainability for Arizona,”
said Lori Singleton, president and CEO at Arizona Forward.

“It takes a village to create change. We are so pleased to showcase the projects and people who are making a difference for our state.

For the past 50 years, Arizona Forward’s partners in the community have completed projects that achieve a balance between the built and natural environment – impacting the state’s physical, technical, social and aesthetic development.
In addition to the celebration of all projects submitted this year, awards will be given to projects that are outstanding demonstrations of environmental excellence.”

Let's turn to some extracts taken from an earlier post on this blog, featuring a different reporter, Gary Nelson. The next piece of the jig-saw puzzle was written about earlier in the summer.
Superstition Vistas: An EV vision on hold looks for new life              

 

Gary Nelson Tribune Contributor 09 July 2017

“. . . Seldom in the history of the U.S. has there been a chance to envision the future of one piece of property this large, this strategic and this close to a major metropolitan region,” a 2006 report said. It seemed then that construction in the Vistas could begin at any moment.

But history, in the form of the Great Recession, hit the pause button . . . if life there were to be tenable, it would need untold billions of infrastructure – provided by whom, exactly?

And what about the water supply? .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .."

 

THAT WAS THE QUESTION IN 2017

 

> Mike Hutchinson, a former Mesa city manager, has served for nine years as the East Valley Partnership’s project director for Superstition Vistas. It was the EVP that launched planning efforts in about 2003. . .

 

 

SUPERSTITION VISTAS: The Saints Vision For A New Zion-in-The-Desert Expand

Another controversial Land-Deal - it's a 270-square mile parcel bigger than the four towns of Mesa, Gilbert, Tempe and most of Chandler combined, just east of the Maricopa County line. . .

Here's the incredulous narrative-spin concocted by Jordan Rose who wants readers of the The Law Group Reporter to believe-in.

BLOGGER NOTE: Hang on to four towns ( it comes up in a story farther down)

She appends it to an seemingly innocuous account of a recent Arizona State Land Auction

"This is a tremendous accomplishment for the State Land Department and a great victory of education in Arizona. To have such a robust auction with multiple legitimate potential developers means this State Land Department made a great decision to go to auction”

Jordan Rose, Rose Law Group Founder and President

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WHAT? Exactly what is legitimate in how she frames that narrative?

It's an ENTIRE CLOUD to hide what the real story on-the-ground here in Arizona is - a smokescreen

Let's take a time-out on that and look at the real nitty-gritty and the use of that frequently-used word "Vistas".

In Arizona that word and "Superstition Vistas" was the vision of Roc Arnett.In Vermont - the birthplace of Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith - it was a non-profit named The New Vistas Foundation that first made waves in 2016 when Utah millionaire bought up 900 acres. Those 900 acres were part of a larger plan to collect 5,000 acres across the four towns of Royalton, Sharon, Strafford, and Tunbridge, and carve out a walkable, mixed-use urban development for 15,000 to 20,000 people.
Hall claimed that the project isn’t religious...and that the LDS isn’t involved in any way...Hall had already dropped $100 million on kickstarting a chain of global NewVistas, and a prototype community in Provo, Utah, close to Brigham Young University, was still on track.

PARADISE LOST

Vermont’s Mormon megacity called off after preservationists sound the alarm

By Jonathan Hilburg • June 28, 2018

        

"Plans for a utopian city based around the Mormon design principles of Joseph Smith have been scuttled by their Salt Lake City-based developer, after the National Trust for Historic Preservation put out a warning about the project. . .

READ MORE > https://mesazona.blogspot.com/2018/07/preservation-rules-in-vermont-plans-for.html

By Robert Anglen | Arizona Republic

FLORENCE — A state land auction near some of the most lucrative residential real estate in the region opened Wednesday with lowest possible legal price and only four bidders.
When the gavel came down a little more than an hour later, two homebuilders had pushed the purchase price of the southeast Valley land to more than three times the appraised value of $68 million.
Texas-based D.R. Horton cast the winning bid of $245.5 million for the tract known as the Superstition Vistas