Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

vi Table of contents11 Potential impacts of the continuing urbanization on regional climate 179 12 Quantification of water-related ecosystem services 197 13 Qualitative assessment of sup

Water Bankruptcy in the Land of Plenty

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Franck Poupeau

UMI iGLOBES, CNRS/University of Arizona, USA

Hoshin Gupta

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

Aleix Serrat-Capdevila

UMI iGLOBES CNRS/Department of Hydrology and

Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona, USA

Maria A Sans-Fuentes

Biosphere 2, University of Arizona, USA

Susan Harris

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

László G Hayde

UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education,

Delft, The Netherlands

Water Bankruptcy

in the Land of Plenty

© 2016 UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands

Print edition published by: CRC Press/Balkema

P.O Box 11320, 2301 EH Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: Pub NL@taylorandfrancis.com

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CRC Press/Balkema is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

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of this publication and/or the information contained herein.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Applied for

ISBN: 978-1-138-02969-9 (Pbk), Taylor & Francis Group

ISBN: 978-1-4987-7699-8 (eBook PDF), UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands

All rights reserved.

A pdf version of this work will be made available in open access via

http://repository.tudelft.nl/ihe/ This version is licensed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License,

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Cover illustration: László G Hayde, Landscape with Saguaros, Tucson region,

Southern Arizona, USA, April 2012

Cover design: Peter Stroo, UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education, Delft,

The Netherlands

Table of contents

Preface ix

1 The idea of a transatlantic dialogue 3

2 Organization of the book and mind map 7

8 The social logic of urban sprawl 121

9 Water and urban development challenges of urban growth 141

vi Table of contents

11 Potential impacts of the continuing urbanization on regional climate 179

12 Quantification of water-related ecosystem services 197

13 Qualitative assessment of supply and demand of ecosystem services 223

14 The role of biodiversity in the hydrological cycle 249

15 Implications of spatially neutral groundwater management 291

17 Alternative water sources towards increased resilience 337

18 Differentiated approaches of groundwater management 363

21 Bringing all the stories together: Beyond the Tucson case study 401

22 Next steps: Collaborative research and training

List of Acronyms

ADEQ Arizona Department of Environmental Quality

ADWR Arizona Department of Water Resources

AMA Active Management Areas

ARS Arizona Revised Statutes

AWBA Arizona Water Banking Authority

AWS Assured Water Supply (AWS) certificate

BCPA Boulder Canyon Project Act

BOR Bureau of Reclamation

BSC Biological Soil Crusts

CAGRD Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment Districts

CALS College of Agriculture and Life Science

CAP Central Arizona Project

CAPA CAP Association

CAPLA College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture

CAWCD Central Arizona Water Conservation District

CGMI Citizen’s Growth Management Initiative

CICES Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services

CLS Conservation Lands System

CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

DEM Digital Elevation Model

DOI Department of the Interior

EIS Environmental Impact Statement

GCASE Groundwater, Climate and Stakeholder Engagement

GIS Geographical Information System

GMA Groundwater Management Act of 1980

GSFs Groundwater Saving Facilities

GUAC Groundwater Users Advisory Councils

HOAs Home Owners’ Associations

HRUs Hydrological Response Units

HWB Human Well-Being Submodel

IID Imperial Irrigation District

INAs Irrigation Non-expansion Areas

IPAG Institutional and Policy Advisory Group

viii List of Acronyms

IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature

LSM Land Surface Model

LTSC Long-Term Storage Credits

LULC Land Use and Land Cover

MA Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

MAF Million Acre Feet

MLP Market Land-Price Submodel

MuSIASEM Multiscale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystems Metabolism

NARR North American Regional Reanalysis

NEPA National Environmental Policy Act

NIMBY Not In My Back Yard

PAMA Phoenix Active Management Area

PDI Precipitation Drought Index

PSWP Pacific Southwest Water Plan

PVA Public Values Assessment

RAMS Regional Atmospheric Modeling System

ROD Record of Decision

RWH Rainwater Harvesting

SALC Southern Arizona Leadership Council

SBS College of Social Behavioral Sciences

SCWEPM Santa Cruz Watershed Ecosystem Portfolio Model

SDCP Sonoran Desert Conservation

SDWA Safe Drinking Water Act

SPRC Southern Pacific Railway Company

SRP Salt River Project

SWAN Sustainable Water Action Network Project

SWAT Soil and Water Assessment Tool

TDS Total Dissolved Solids

TDW Transatlantic Dialogue on Water

TEEB The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity

TEP Tucson Electric Power

UCM Urban Canopy Model

UK NEA UK National Ecosystem Assessment

UMI International Centre for “Water, Environment and Public Policy”

CNRS-University of ArizonaUMI-iGLOBES Interdisciplinary and Global Environmental Studies, CNRS-University

of ArizonaUSFs Underground Storage Facilities

WAAs Water Accounting Areas

WCPA Water Consumer Protection Act

WFD Water Framework Directive

WRDC Water Resource Development Commission

WRES Water-Related Ecosystem Services

WRF Weather Research and Forecasting model

Editors

By all standards, water is today’s most coveted resource, and it will continue to be so

in the future Most observers generally agree that, with continued population growth,

conflicts around water are likely to harden, and will involve severe risks of social and

political unrest, both in the South and in the North Worrying trends include

recur-ring flooding, increasing volatility of resource availability, the melting of glaciers (and

consequent sea level rise), resource contamination due to industrial pollution,

degra-dation of soils due to intensive farming, and insufficient access to adequate sanitation,

but also, and most of all, drought In this context, the semi-arid Southwestern United

States, which is currently enduring its most severe “drought” to date, is of

consider-able scientific and political interest

Droughts are not uncommon in the Southwest Advances in paleo-climate struction and instrumental records have revealed that several major droughts have

recon-occurred in the region during the past 200 years However, projected changes in

cli-mate and an over-exploitation of resources are generally considered as primary causes

of ecological disasters that may be expected to follow Of course, to reduce the

com-plexity of this phenomenon to simply a matter of “scarcity of natural resources” would

ignore the fact that the character of a drought has many dimensions, including

mete-orological (prolonged below-average precipitation), hydrologic (the manifestation of

meteorological drought as reduced streamflow and depleted aquifers), agricultural

(driven by, and impacts to, agriculture demand) and socioeconomic (driven by, and

impacts to, other socio-economic sectors) While drought can be viewed as a

perturba-tion imposed upon a coupled natural and human system, the resulting scarcity of water

is clearly the product of a complex interplay between physical availability, the

opera-tion of the environment, and the behaviors of human and the demands they impose

In other words, the public narratives of “drought” and “water scarcity” are,

in today’s world, largely a social construct associated with progressive economic

growth and a widespread adoption of consumptive lifestyles Regardless of whether

the scarcity of water is actually due to natural climatic variability, global warming,

hydrologic change, land cover change, or the ever growing urban and agro-industrial

pressures placed on a finite resource, the public focus is most often on the

insuf-ficiency of physical supply and the perceived “scarcity” of natural resources, rather

than on the analysis of human processes that mediate the governance and

manage-ment of that water

This book proposes and explores the purposely provocative notion of “water bankruptcy” so as to emphasize the socio-economic dimension of water issues in the

x Preface

Southwestern US (and primarily Arizona), between the narratives of growth and the

strategies or policies adopted to pursue competing agendas and circumvent the

inevi-table Given the long-term trend of development in this region, the current drought

might indeed present a window of opportunity in which to induce change, and to

challenge the hegemonic discourse that governs the management of water resources

in the American Southwest Importantly, the situation may present an opportunity to

deal with threats that derive from imbalances between growth patterns and available

resources, the primary cause of scarcity

A first of its kind, developed through close collaboration among a broad range

of natural scientists, social scientists, and resource managers from Europe and the

United States, this book is a committed step towards the collective implementation of

a transdisciplinary approach to unveiling the inner workings of how water is fought

for, allocated and used in the Southwestern US It offers an innovative scientific

per-spective that dissects the conflicted relationship that societies engage in with the

envi-ronment It produces a critical diagnostic evaluation of water problems in the West,

with a particular view to identifying risks for the Tucson area in Arizona (which is

facing continuous urban sprawl and economic growth) The book presents a diversity

of complementary perspectives, including a discussion of natural resources,

biodiver-sity & their management in Arizona, an analysis of the stalemates in drought

manage-ment and their roots in the history of water policy, and an assessmanage-ment of ecosystem

services in the context of both local biodiversity and the economic activities (such as

mines and agriculture) that sustain economic growth Finally, this book is a concerted

effort to explore the interplay between a variety of related scientific disciplines

includ-ing climatology, hydrology, water management, ecosystem services, societal

metabo-lism, water governance, political economy and social science

Franck Poupeau

UMI iGLOBES, CNRS/University of Arizona, USA

Hoshin Gupta

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

László G Hayde

UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education,

Delft, The Netherlands

Introduction

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Chapter 1

The idea of a transatlantic dialogue

The SWAN Consortium

This book sits at the nexus of a broad range of disciplines, perspectives and geographic

locations It was developed in the course of a four-year international cooperation

project entitled SWAN (Sustainable Water ActioN: Building Research Links between

European Union and United States) that was funded by the European Union under

its 7th Framework Program (FP7-INCOLAB-2011) to incentivize international

collaboration on water related issues

This introduction describes, briefly, how this collaborative cross-disciplinary exploration between multiple research areas, users, management agencies and

institutions came about, and discusses how the participants collaborated to integrate

methods, to identify overlaps and connections between research areas, and to arrive

at the realization that a holistic approach can be much more than the sum of its

parts The setting for this collaboration was the Tucson Basin, which provides a

natural basis for anchoring methods and approaches to a contextual reality with

transdisciplinary needs The various chapters in this book tell the stories of humans

and their environment and how their interactions have unfolded, until being threatened

nowadays by the risks of “water bankruptcy” in the American Southwest

The general objective of the SWAN project was to strengthen European research capacity in the USA, to promote competitiveness of European research and industry,

and to inform and involve policy-makers and the general public It included

partici-pants from five member states of the European Union (Bulgaria, France, Netherlands,

Spain and the United Kingdom) and from the University of Arizona (USA) The

pro-ject was coordinated by the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche

Scienti-fique), represented by the UMI iGLOBES.1

The scientific goal of this collaboration was to develop a Transatlantic Dialogue on Water (TDW), with a view to building a major international network that can facilitate

the collaboration of scientists and students with stakeholders and communities

The idea of the TDW is to bridge across multiple scientific disciplines, institutional

participations, and international perspectives, with the working hypothesis that it is

necessary to apply multifaceted approaches that combine natural and social sciences

1 iGLOBES (Interdisciplinary and Global En vironmental Research) is an international joint unit created

by the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que) and the College of Science of the

University of Arizona iGLOBES and the former Department of Hydrology (now Department of

Hydrol-ogy and Atmospheric Sciences) collaborated in the frame of the SWAN project.

4 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

into a new paradigm that explores new governance perspectives and is capable of

dealing with both the uncertainty and complexity inherent in water related issues

With this perspective, the TDW constitutes a platform for bringing together research,

education and knowledge exchange at both national and international levels The

research component constitutes a major pillar for knowledge exchange via training

of students and interaction with stakeholders The knowledge exchange is being

accomplished through periodic extended research stays of European students at the

international joint unit iGLOBES at the University of Arizona, and by bi-annual

meet-ings of the SWAN teams, thereby making possible the collaborative research endeavor

that has given rise to this book

During the project, the scientific perspective shifted progressively towards the use

of “big data” in support of the management of water, by examining the (open) socio-

technical conditions required to access such data, and by examining the (knowledge)

capacities necessary to ensure their utilization (Pedregal et al., 2015) This idea of

“open knowledge” now appears as a key concept underpinning the production of

new forms of scientific work and public participation with stakeholders, thereby

constituting the core of the project and supporting the objective of

transdisciplinar-ity In contrast with multi-disciplinary approaches, transdisciplinarity engenders a

framework in which researchers can both work in parallel in a traditional

discipli-nary fashion and also in interactive and interdisciplidiscipli-nary fashion to address a

com-mon problem, while taking account of the multiple perspectives of stakeholders and

the general public (Rosenfeld, 1992) While this book, the short-term product of a

research grant, does not fully realize the ideal of transdisciplinarity, the desire to

achieve such an approach has served as a guiding principle for the international

research teams involved in the project Certainly we share a common conviction that

dealing with water related issues requires new approaches to knowledge production

that incorporate multiple scientific, professional and public perspectives

What has become clear to us is that the complexity inherent in the management

of water increasingly necessitates a combination of approaches that draw from the

physical, environmental and social sciences, and that are open to and validated by civil

society This awareness results from a need to acknowledge “the unavoidable existence

of non-equivalent perceptions and representations of reality, contrasting but legitimate

perspectives found among social actors, and heavy levels of uncertainty” (see Funtowicz

and Ravetz 1991, 1993, and Giampietro et al 2012, among others) The natural result

is a paradigm shift in the management of natural resources (see Pahl-Wostl et al.,

2011, Del Moral et al., 2014, among others) that is characterized by a reorientation in

objectives, methodologies and evaluation criteria, by the involvement of a broad

vari-ety of agents, and by a significant restructuring of institutional frameworks

So it is useful, while reading this book, to remember that human problems that resist

easy solution are typically characterized by (Hernández-Mora and Del Moral, 2015):

• Complexity: The human dimension introduces reflexivity into the managed

sys-tem, while ecological systems respond to pressures and interventions in non-linear and unpredictable ways, so that socio-ecological systems are often characterized

by non-predictable and unexpected responses

• Uncertainty: The technical solutions and tools provided by science cannot hope

to accurately represent the total system and all of its interactions in all their

The idea of a transatlantic dialogue 5

complexity, even with sophisticated models, modelers and computers (Giampetro

et al., 2006).

• Incommensurability: It is, in practice, impossible to construct a single

computational model that comprehensively represents the heterogeneity of information, different kinds of disciplinary knowledge and descriptions of reality, and different but legitimate values, perceptions and interests that can be ascribed

to non-equivalent descriptive domains (Funtowizc and Ravetz 1994).

The complexity makes it necessary to develop dynamic and adaptive approaches

to resource management (Brookshire et al., 2012) The uncertainty (arising from lack

of data and/or background information regarding the system under study)

unavoid-ably requires us to simplify our scientific models (Gupta et al., 2012) And the

incom-mensurability makes it necessary to investigate the range of alternative potential

solutions, without explicit or implicit a priori weighting of priorities and relevance

(for instance by monetizing all aspects of existing alternatives)

If we add to these the facts that a) cultural, political and ideological frameworks implicitly condition the context within which such model development occurs (i.e., the

roles of “meaning” and “value” cannot be ignored), and b) it is not uncommon (due to

outright ignorance) for us to ‘not know what we ignore’ (Wynne, 1993), it becomes

ines-capable that knowledge must necessarily be co-produced So, it is not possible to produce

satisfactory answers to water management challenges via the “old” approach of simply

bringing “technical” expertise to bear Further, in that approach, claims for the legitimacy

of specific interventions tend to reside exclusively in the realms of authority and

privi-leged knowledge – the prevailing “state-engineering paradigm” that has over-determined

water management for more than a century (Staddon 2010) We must instead adopt a

participatory approach to governance that implies collaborative research at each step of

the management process – in the definition of the problem, in establishing the range of

options, in selecting the range of acceptable solutions, and in designing the indicators used

to monitor and guide the process (Lorrain & Poupeau, 2016) – so that true legitimacy can

be achieved via a shared vision of both the problem and the equitable solution set

As expressed, in part, by this book, the TDW has sought to take this evolving water management paradigm into account while developing and supporting new

forms of collaborative research that bridge across disciplines and incorporate the

views of non-academic stakeholders This book can be read as a first step in our

journey towards a realization of the ideal of transdisciplinarity

REFERENCES

Brookshire, D., Gupta, H.V and Matthews, O.P (Editors) (2012) Water Policy in New

Mexico: Addressing the Challenge of an Uncertain Future, RFF Press, Resources for the

Future Book Series: Issues in Water Resources Policy Series ISBN 978-1-933115-99-3.

Del Moral, L., Pita, M.F., Pedregal, B., Hernández-Mora, N., Limones, N (2014) Current

paradigms in the management of water: Resulting information needs In: Antti Roose (ed.)

Progress in water geography- Pan-European discourses, methods and practices of spatial

water research, Publicationes Instituti Geographici Universitatis Tartuensis 110, Institute

of Ecology and Earth Sciences, Department of Geography University of Tartu, pp: 21–31

ISBN 978-9985-4-0825-4.

6 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

Funtowicz, S.O and Ravetz, J.R (1991) A New Scientific Methodology for Global

Environmental Issues, in Robert Costanza (ed.) Ecological Economics: The Science and

Management of Sustainability, New York: Columbia University Press: 137–152.

Funtowicz, S.O and Ravetz, J.R (1993) Uncertainty and quality in science for policy,

Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Funtowicz, S and Ravetz, J.R (1994) The worth of a songbird: ecological economicsas a

post-normal science, Ecological Economics, 10: 197–207.

Giampietro, M., Allen, T.F.H and Mayumi, K (2006) The Epistemological predicament

associated with purposive quantitative analysis, Ecological Complexity, 3(4): 307–327.

Giampietro, M., Mayumi, K and Sorman, A.H (2012) The Metabolic Pattern of Societies

Where Economists Fall Short London and New York: Routledge.

Gupta, H.V., Brookshire, D.S., Tidwell, V and Boyle, D (2012) Modeling: A Basis for Linking

Policy to Adaptive Water Management, Chapter 2 in Brookshire D., Gupta H.V and

P Matthews (Editors), Water Policy in New Mexico: Addressing the Challenge of an

Uncer-tain Future, RFF Press, Resources for the Future Book Series: Issues in Water Resources

Policy Series.

Hernández-Mora, N and Del Moral, L (2015) Evaluation of the Water Framework Directive

Implementation Process in Europe, SWAN Project, Deliverable 3.2, online: ject.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/Deliverable_3_2.pdf.

https://swanpro-Lorrain, D and Poupeau, F (2016) The protagonists of the Water Sector and their Practices

Socio-technical Systems in a Combinatory Perspective, Introduction to: Lorrain, D and

Poupeau, F (Editors), Water Regimes: Beyond the Public and Private Sector Debate,

London, Routledge, Earthscan Series.

Pahl-Wostl, C., Jeffrey, P., Isendahl, N and Brugnach M (2011) Maturing the New Water

Management Paradigm: Progressing from Aspiration to practice, Water Resources

Management, 25: 837–856.

Pedregal, B., Del Moral, L., Cabello, V., Hernández-Mora, N and Limones, N (2015)

Information and knowledge for water governance in the networked society, Water

Alternatives 8(2): 1–19.

Rosenfield, P.L (1992) The potential of transdisciplinary research for sustaining and extending

linkages between the health and social sciences, Social Science and Medicine, 35: 1343–57.

Staddon, C (2010) Managing Europe’s Water: 21st century challenges, Farnham, Ashgate

Press.

Wynne, B (1993) Public uptake of science: a case for institutional reflexivity, Public

Understanding of Science, 2(4): 321–337.

Chapter 2

Organization of the book

and mind map

Editors

This book is about the physical and socio-economic roles played by water in the

Southwestern US, with a primary focus on Tucson, Arizona In the context of

contin-ued population growth, together with the fact that periods of drought are common in

the Southwest and that the climate can be expected to change due to global warming,

it is not unreasonable to expect that water will become increasingly scarce (leading to

a “water bankruptcy”) and that conflicts around water may increase Such scarcity

is, however, not a purely physical phenomenon, but results from a complex interplay

between physical availability, the dynamics of the environment, and the behaviors of

human and the demands they impose

The chapters in this book explore both the physical and the socio-economic

dimensions of water issues Accordingly, the material is organized into four main

sec-tions, dealing progressively with the “Socio-Historic Perspective” regarding the

evo-lution of laws and water policy, a discussion of the implications of “Urban Growth”

driven by expansion of the population, a discussion of “Ecosystem Services” and how

water and the biodiversity it supports together serve the needs of both humans and the

natural environment, and finally a discussion of how strategies for “Water Use and

Groundwater Management” have evolved to deal with water scarcity, and of how

successful such strategies have been

The four sections are followed by a collection of perspectives on water issues offered by professionals from different sectors and stakeholder representatives Finally,

the concluding section describes how this collective investigation was built (“Bringing

The Stories Together”), synthesizes the material provided herein, and reflects (“Next

Steps: Collaborative Research and Training for Transdisciplinarity”) on what has

been learned about the water problems of the Southwestern US and about the nature

of transdisciplinary investigation and education

Also provided is a ‘Mind Map’ that helps to visually link all of the various research

perspectives presented in this book

ON WATER IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

The first section (Chapters 3–7) explores the human factors related to water supply

and demand in the Southwestern US Setting the stage where the research in this

book unfolds, Chapter 3 (The Tucson Basin) provides an overview of the physical

8 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

context of the Tucson region and southern Arizona, as well as its human history

until the present The basin and range landscape and climate of the region endow

it with unique hydrologic and ecological characteristics that have conditioned the

lifestyles and struggles of the local human populations and have influenced their

evolving relationship with the land, water and the environment The chapter ends

by touching on some of the current management challenges faced by the Tucson

region

Chapter 4 (Laws of the River) then provides a historical account of laws and

agreements framing water management in the West; it examines the primary legal

doctrines and rulings that have affected water allocation, thereby constituting the

so-called ‘Law of the River’ Important historical highlights include: (i) the 1908

Supreme Court ruling that established the concept of federal reserved water rights

that provided water to Native American reservations and reserved senior water rights

for beneficial uses such as agriculture, (ii) the doctrine of ‘prior appropriation’, that

asserts that water rights arise from beneficial use and established a priority system

among water users, (iii) the Colorado River Compact of 1922 that governs the

alloca-tion of water rights among the US states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming,

Nevada, Arizona and California, and the country Mexico, (iv) the Colorado River

Basin Project Act of 1968 that allowed Arizona to proceed with construction of the

Central Arizona Project Canal, and (v) the Arizona Groundwater Management Act

of 1980 that established the first meaningful groundwater management law in the

state’s history Importantly, the account illustrates how Western water management

has moved away from traditional forms of conflict (litigation and court action), and

resulted in the development of novel institutional tools that stress cooperation and

consensus It shows clearly that water policy involves a great deal more than

manag-ing flows, it also involves managmanag-ing trust, people, and political power and even the

forces of domination, which may often be implicit and charged with a particularized

and historical energy The modern form of struggle in policymaking, therefore, is less

about taming the waters of the Colorado River and more about the struggle to reach

consensus

Chapters 5 and 6 together discuss the historical and social forces that led to

the construction of the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a canal that carries Arizona’s

share of Colorado River water to its major urban centers They examine the social

his-tory of water policy in the western US, and pay particular attention to the consequent

social conflicts that arose among the various economic, political and administrative

coalitions that formed to advance their respective interests and visions of the world

These chapters make a distinction between two phases of Western water policy, a first

phase (late 19th century to 1920s) corresponding to the genesis of federal action, and

a second phase (1920 to 1970) characterized by a shift from federal to regional

deci-sion making, in which the battle between Arizona and California for Colorado River

water occurred, culminating in development of the CAP

Chapter 5 (Water for a New America) addresses the first phase, discussing: (i) the

transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture, growing “market” orientation,

and the dominance of banks, railway companies, large-scale manufacturers, and farm

product suppliers at the end of the 19th century; (ii) the Reclamation Act of 1902

that was intended to usher in a “New America” of small agricultural landowners but

which instead helped to shore up the political and economic power brokers of the

Organization of the book and mind map 9

region; and (iii) the Roosevelt administrations’ focus on infrastructure projects as the

way to clamber out of the Great Depression

Chapter 6 (Sharing the Colorado River) continues the story by investigating

the historical and social forces that contributed to the construction of the CAP It

discusses how the sociological struggle between the various coalitions gradually

shifted from the level of disagreements between the states (and the federal

govern-ment) to local tensions over the viability of the CAP Major aspects include: (i)

Arizona’s use of the US Supreme Court as an arbiter in regards to its sovereignty

and legitimacy over the Colorado River; (ii) the attitudes of Arizona’s elites, in the

face of unprecedented demographic growth and the significant seasonal migration

in a region where groundwater aquifers were gradually drying up due to the needs

of agriculture; (iii) the 1948 creation of the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission

to fight for the state’s share of Colorado River water; (iv) the economic shift in

the 1950’s away from agriculture as the main source of wealth; (v) the Colorado

River Basin Act of 1968 that was produced by a compromise between the various

forces at play; (vi) the 1970s rise of the environmentalist movement; (vii) the 1980

Groundwater Management Act that instituted an innovative approach to

manag-ing groundwater and introduced limits to the expansion of irrigation; and (viii)

the eventual delivery of CAP water to Tucson in 1992 and the subsequent tensions

that arose among economic leaders, citizen organizations, local politicians and the

utility companies As shown by this discussion, water policies in the West are the

product of temporary alliances between various economic, political, and

admin-istrative coalitions who regard water as an engine for economic development and

political power

Finally Chapter 7 (The Making of Water Policy) of this section provides a

socio-logical analysis of how water conflicts are inscribed within spaces of power In

con-trast to narratives such as Cadillac Desert (Reisner, 1986), which illustrate the brute

(and indeed brutal) force of economics, this chapter points out that water development

in the West has involved a struggle over what constitutes the legitimate principles of

vision and division of the world and its development Beginning with the John Wesley

Powell vision of settlers organizing themselves into ‘cooperative commonwealths’,

this chapter discusses: (i) the political maneuvering that resulted in the 1902 Federal

Reclamation Act whereby the federal government and an array of powerful economic

forces took over the development of water infrastructure, gradually transforming the

West into a breadbasket and economic powerhouse; (ii) the resulting concentration of

power in a politico-bureaucratic elite, with the attendant shift from water viewed as a

biological necessity (as in subsistence economies characteristic of traditional societies)

to water viewed instead as a commodity valued for its role in economic production;

(iii) the growing concerns about the legitimacy of this system, its role in promoting

increasing levels of inequality, and the need for a focus on the conservation of nature,

leading to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970; and (iv) the replacement

of the old system by one which is more receptive to citizens, and enables the public

to lay claim to cultural attachments that cannot be reduced to monetary evaluation

In summary, this chapter poses the issue of water management as occurring within a

field of struggle wherein the dominant groups must constantly refine and demonstrate

the legitimacy of their perspective(s) in the face of the continuing involvement of other

stakeholders

10 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

The next section (Chapters 8–11) explores the role played by population growth, and

in particular urbanization, in regards to the demand and supply of water in the region

It begins, Chapter 8 (The Social Logic of Urban Sprawl), with a discussion of the how

and why urban centers in Arizona tend to sprawl out over the local countryside due

to social and environmental pressures, even though one might expect that the poor

availability of water would tend to restrict growth Certainly, sprawl is driven to a

significant degree by the actions of a “pro-growth” coalition composed of public and

private actors, including the real estate industry, and is enabled by new flows of water

brought to the region via the CAP canal Interviews conducted with both developers

and city managers provide insights into their perspectives regarding “sustainability”.

Chapter 9 (Water and Urban Development Challenges of Urban Growth)

con-tinues this discussion by examining whether sustainable urban growth is possible in

the context of available supplies of water and wastewater, for different urban settings

and environmental conditions It reviews the economic and demographic changes that

occurred in the Tucson Metropolitan Region after the end of World War II, and the

implementation of multiple strategies to establish diversified water supply sources,

including: a) use of reclaimed water on parks and golf courses; b) recycled wastewater

for indirect potable use; and c) recharge of effluent into aquifers It discusses three

main patterns of urban growth that result from the combination of land

develop-ment and water/wastewater access – “urban expansion”, “leap-frog developdevelop-ment”

and “wildcat development”.

Next, Chapter 10 (Comprehensive Urban Planning) examines the

implementa-tion of environmental policies in Pima County and the city of Tucson, by reviewing

the role and evolution of urban planning It supplements the discussion with practical

insights provided via interviews conducted with the Pima Services Department, the

Pima County Planning Division-Comprehensive Plan, and the City of Tucson Housing

& Community Development Department A core concept that emerges is that of the

integration of scientific disciplines, approaches and experiences within a coordinated

dialogue between the social, natural and engineering sciences Further, the chapter

points to the spatial mismatch that can occur between different planning scales, and

the difficulties that can arise in relation to the adjustment of the different hydrographic,

socio-economic and jurisdictional aspects involved The chapter concludes that there

is room for greater efforts to be made to effectively engage society in comprehensive

planning decision-making, especially in relation to water in this arid region

Finally, Chapter 11 (Potential Impacts of Continuing Urbanization on Regional

Climate) discusses how the growth of the “Sun Corridor”, which is rapidly filling

in the space between Phoenix and Tucson, is likely to result in climatic changes that

urban and regional managers will have to deal with Urban expansion changes the

physical environment by altering the albedo, heat capacity, and thermal

conductiv-ity of the land surface, thereby changing the energy balance of the region Detailed

simulations, conducted using a coupled model of the land surface and the atmosphere,

show that while projected changes in urban land cover between 2005 and 2050 are

unlikely to alter precipitation patterns, they will strengthen the “urban heat island”

effect and increase the demand for water and energy supply to levels that are not

sustainable

Organization of the book and mind map 11

AND BIODIVERSITY

The third section (Chapters 12–14) explores the interplay between humans, water,

and the environment It begins, Chapter 12 (Quantification of Water-Related

Eco-system Services), with a discussion of Water-Related EcoEco-system Services (WRES)

provided to society by the Upper Santa Cruz watershed, and how these services are

affected by changing land use In particular, the study shows that forested lands

pro-vide the highest levels of supply of WRES in the region, and that a variety of urban

growth scenarios all can be expected to result in a decreasing trend in the supply of

almost all services provided by the current ecosystem

Chapter 13 (Qualitative Assessment of Supply and Demand of Ecosystem Services) continues with a survey and interview-based assessment of the perceived

current levels of supply and demand for ecosystem services in the Pantano Wash

watershed, in both time and space The resulting maps display spatial and temporal

mismatches in supply and demand, that can inform water planning efforts, and

facili-tate the optimization of strategies for sustainable management in which a balance is

sought between the provision of natural resources and the demands imposed by a

myriad of interests Moreover, they provide support for cooperative decision-making

and resource planning by illuminating perceptions that exist regarding the importance

of various ecosystem goods and services

Finally, Chapter 14 (The Role of Biodiversity in the Hydrological Cycle)

dis-cusses the need for water management strategies in the Southwestern US to take into

consideration the negative effects that increasing aridity (due to changing climate) is

likely to have on biodiversity in the region Loss of biodiversity can be expected to

alter the balance of Ecosystem Services However, surprisingly little is known about

how soil-dwelling and burrowing species change the permeability of the soil and

thereby affect the hydrological cycle, and this chapter points out the need for more

research in this area so that such information can be incorporated into water

manage-ment and biodiversity conservation programs

MANAGEMENT

The fourth section (Chapters 15–18) investigates the attempts to achieve

sustainabil-ity that have been implemented in the Tucson Basin It begins, Chapter 15

(Implica-tions of Spatially Neutral Groundwater Management), with a historical perspective

on water use in the area, and on the changes induced by the arrival of CAP water

from the Colorado River, with attention to the impacts that conservation programs

have had on municipal and agricultural water demand, and on the spatial distribution

of groundwater dynamics (recharge, pumping and water levels) The study uses the

Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM)

framework to analyze available data on water use, a variety of socioeconomic

vari-ables, and groundwater management, showing that the CAP served as a tipping

point in the water metabolism, by multiplying the sources available while increasing

infrastructural and institutional complexity, thereby fueling economic development

12 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

It reviews the impacts that strategies of “conservation”, “growth control” and

“replacement of groundwater with CAP supply” have had on various sectors, and

highlights the facts that a) vulnerability to potential Colorado water shortages and b)

uncertainties regarding the ability to achieve and maintain distributed safe yield will

continue to be core management issues over the next decade

Chapter 16 (Groundwater Dynamics) investigates the problem of how the

dynamics of groundwater aquifers that serve the Tucson Basin are affected by natural

cycles of drought at irregular inter-annual and seasonal time scales, by analyzing water

tables and stream flows datasets While drought cannot be avoided, proper planning

can help to mitigate its environmental and social effects The study shows that in

recent years, when CAP deliveries were used to substitute for pumping, the onset of

a ‘groundwater drought’ following a ‘precipitation drought’ was delayed by about

3.5 years, which means that the time when a hydrogeological drought can be expected

to occur in the Upper Santa Cruz can be anticipated However, when groundwater

was pumped instead of using CAP deliveries (1980–2000): a) the pattern is much less

obvious and is masked by human pumping; and b) the onset of ‘groundwater drought’

in response to ‘precipitation drought’ tends to be much more immediate, with a more

rapid decline in groundwater levels

Chapter 17 (Alternative Water Sources towards Increased Resilience) assesses

the sustainability of water use in the Tucson Basin, and discusses feasible

alterna-tive options that might be pursued to increase resilience and help to fill future gaps

between demand and supply The investigation, based on comments and observations

solicited from a diverse group of local water managers and stakeholders, discusses

problem solving approaches and management strategies that have been proposed

to help balance the water budget Further, it provides a critical analysis of current

and future water resource uses, projects and policies, and examines use of innovative

approaches such as rainwater harvesting, storm water capture, grey-water systems,

and use of reclaimed water for indirect and direct potable re-use The chapter

con-cludes that these alternative water sources are underexploited and hold significant

potential to offset groundwater pumping, and that sustainability can best be

accom-plished through water management approaches that combine gray- and

green-infra-structure that recognizes and nurtures ecosystem services within urban landscapes

and the broader basin

Finally Chapter 18 (Differentiated Approaches of Groundwater Management)

compares the changes in water use and current water practices that have occurred

in the Tucson Active Management Area (TAMA), with those that have occurred in

the neighboring Upper San Pedro (USP) basin Whereas the TAMA operates under

the state regulatory structure, the USP basin (which was not designated as an Active

Management Area) benefits from a partnership established between governmental

and non-governmental entities In both cases, municipal demand has declined and, by

that assessment, the management measures can be deemed successful However, while

agricultural demand has been reduced significantly in the USP Basin, there has been

little change in the TAMA Similarly, there have been differences in the growth of

new development, and the effects of needing to certify an ‘assured water supply’ must

be more fully considered In neither basin have the problems of groundwater

deple-tion been solved, nor has either safe or sustainable yield been achieved The chapter

concludes that a) the Groundwater Management Act should be revisited to determine

Organization of the book and mind map 13

if it is achieving its policy goals, and b) consideration needs to be given to the use of

water by natural ecosystems in the TAMA

The fifth section of the book (Chapters 19–20) is a collection of written perspectives

that was solicited from various stakeholders who have been involved, in one way

or another, in helping to guide the investigations reported in this book Rather than

a unified vision, this chapter represents the diverse and sometimes opposing views

that reflect the opinions and interests of various stakeholder communities It is clear

from these perspectives that the task of finding a middle ground for the benefit of

the community as a whole (in the form of tradeoff solutions that balance the wide

spectrum of preferences and values) remains a major challenge for planning, policy

and management

6 CONCLUSION

Finally, the last section of the book (Chapters 21–22) integrates the main findings,

insights and recommendations from the various book chapters, and reflects on what

has been learned through the investigations reported herein

Chapter 21 (Bringing all the stories together) summarizes important

conclu-sions and recommendations from the book chapters, and discusses how the

par-ticipants in the Sustainable Action Water Network (SWAN) project, drawn from a

variety of social and natural science disciplines, collaborated in an effort to bring

a transdisciplinary perspective to the study of water in the Tucson Basin Major

insights from the book’s chapters are woven together here, providing

recommen-dations that may be useful to planners and decision-makers While it is arguable

whether true transdisciplinarity was actually achieved, the collaboration provided

a very valuable learning experience and also resulted in the materials that form the

basis for this book

Finally, Chapter 22 (Next Steps) concludes this book with a broad overview of

what has been learned though this collaborative research endeavor, and provides

some recommendations for others interested in pursuing such an endeavor

MIND MAP

To aid in synthesis the information included in this book, Figure 1 presents a ‘Mind

Map’ that provides a visual perspective on how the various issues discussed in this book

are connected While there are many ways in which these concepts can be arranged

(in keeping with the reality of multiple perspectives), here we have conceived of the

main areas of investigation being the Natural and Social Sciences, and the Natural

and Human Systems The severe risks associated with poor solutions to water

man-agement problems lead naturally to the need for an encompassing transdisciplinary

perspective (as discussed extensively in the latter part of this book), and ultimately

CONSERVATION WATER DEMAND

WATER

Water Bankruptcy Water Scarcity

TRANSDISCIPLINARITY

NEW WATER CULTUR EDUCATION

Multiple Perspectives Open Knowledge Big Data Collaboration Role of Science New Ways of Thinking

Hydrology Meteorology Ecosystems Services Regional Climate Urban heat island

Management & Policy Water governance

Political economy Socio-history Social metabolism Water conflicts Cultural Values Power

Agriculture Stakeholders

Economic growth

Urban growth

Urbanization Urban planning Growth Corridors CAP Groundwater pumping Rainwater harvesting Grey/Green infrastructure Grey-water systems Storm water capture Reclaimed water

Infrastructures

Resilience Sustainability

Groundwater

Industry

Watersheds Soil permeability Drought Biodiversity Resilience Sustainability

Water tables Rivers Recharge Precipitation drought Groundwater drought

Organization of the book and mind map 15

for the need to an enhanced approach to education and training (see Concluding

Chapter) Through these, it may be possible to envision the emergence of a “new

water culture”, based in democratic principles, and with social equity at its heart

Hoshin Gupta

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

László G Hayde

UNESCO-IHE, Institute for Water Education,

Delft, The Netherlands

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The SWAN project has implemented a tool for open access socio-environmental data at

the website www.gis-swan.org.

GIS SWAN is a web-based viewer containing accessible water resources information

It aims at disseminating some of the research results obtained during the SWAN project

that studied the Tucson Basin area (TAMA) It has been implemented by the University

of Seville (Spain) and the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography

(Bulgarian Academy of Science).

Several Geo-layers representing the water system, the land cover system and the territory

system of Tucson Basin, as well as others produced by the SWAN teams, have been

integrated into the SWAN GIS geo-viewer.

This tool represents an excellent example of how open knowledge can be disseminated

and provides a way to connect citizens with ongoing scientific activities and results.

All the maps were realized by Rositsa Yaneva (National Institute of Geophysics,

Geodesy and Geography, Bulgarian Academy of Science).

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Map 1 United States of America.

Map 2 Colorado basin.

Map 3 State of Arizona.

Map 4 Arizona water systems and infrastructures (including the CAP).

Map 5 Southern Arizona groundwater storage facilities.

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Socio-historic perspectives

on water in the American

southwest

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Chapter 3

The Tucson basin: Natural

and human history

Aleix Serrat-Capdevila

UMI iGLOBES CNRS/Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,

University of Arizona, USA

INTRODUCTION

The current state of a human-natural system and its management challenges cannot

be understood without its historical evolution This chapter describes the landscapes,

geology, climate, hydrology and environment that have hosted the evolution of local

human societies since the first arrival of people in the region A discussion follows

on the history of the interactions between these communities and the environment,

with an emphasis on human events that introduced new technologies practices These

shaped both the environment and the societies in ways and scales not previously seen,

and caused significant feedbacks to occur within the human-natural system These

new practices can be understood as metabolic transitions, as they represent changes

in the way society uses resources to produce goods and well-being The chapter ends

with a brief overview of the current management challenges

1 THE PHYSICAL SETTING

1.1 A semi-arid basin and range landscape

Most of the Southeastern Arizona landscape is dominated by “basin and range”

systems caused by faulting and uplift 12 to 6 million years ago during the Miocene,

resulting in a sequence of ranges (Horsts) and tectonic depressions (Graven) These

depressions have – over millions of years from the Miocene to the Quaternary –

been progressively filled with sediments eroded from the mountain ranges along

the basin boundaries (Figure 1) The geomorphology that gives the Tucson basin

its current shape is mostly dominated by the large alluvial fan of Cienaga Creek,

surrounded by smaller alluvial fans over the rock pediment at the base of the

Catalina Mountains to the north, the Rincon Mountains to the east and Santa Rita

Mountains to the south

The bodies of water that flow through and occupy the pore spaces of these basin sediments are called aquifers Under pristine conditions (i.e., before the advent of

extensive groundwater pumping using high-lift turbine pumps) water levels tended to

be close to the surface, especially along the river channels Due to slow and continuous

28 Water bankruptcy in the land of plenty

replenishment through rainwater recharge, these aquifers directly intersected the river

channels so that groundwater could drain out of the aquifer to flow down the slope of

the river channel (which is the line of lowest elevation in the landscape) and support,

during the long dry season, a lush and bio-diverse riparian corridor with cottonwoods,

willows and mesquite forests

1.2 Climate, hydrology and vegetation

The Southern Arizona region has a semi-arid climate due to its latitudinal position

between the Hadley and Ferrel cells that contribute to global patterns of atmospheric

circulation (Figure 2) In sub-tropical latitudes, cold and dry air masses from high

atmospheric altitudes sink towards the land surface between the two cells and thereby

limit the possibility of convection, i.e., the rising of moist air needed for cloud

formation

Daily normal temperatures range from 39°F low/65°F high (3.9°C/18.3°C) in the month of January to 70°F low/100°F high (21°C/38°C) in the month of June While

progressively hot and very dry throughout the spring and into the summer, relative

humidity rises again with the arrival of the monsoon season (NWS-NOAA, 2015)

Rainfall in southeastern Arizona is characterized by a bimodal precipitation regime consisting of rainfall in both the winter and the summer, and high spatial

and temporal variability (Figure 4) Being near the northern boundaries of the North

American Monsoon system, summer monsoons in Tucson begin in early to mid-July

and last until September, bringing convective thunderstorms of high intensity and

short duration In the months of September and October, moisture from dissipating

tropical cyclones may also contribute some rainfall (Webb and Betancourt, 1992)

In winter, during January and February, regional frontal storms originating in the

Pacific Ocean provide rainfall of lower intensity but longer duration compared to

A Heating from Beneath, Arching (30 million years ago)

East

sedimentary cover rocks

Younger volcanics

Arch ancient granites

Catalina gneiss block under Tucson valley drops 10,000 feet or more

Tucson Mountains volcano and its throat

West

B Volcanism and Detachment Fault (25 million years ago)

C Basin and Range Faulting (12 to 6 million years ago)

D Today-Basins Filled with Sand, Gravel and Clay

Galiuro Mountains San Pedro Valley

Catalina Mountains Catalina detachment fault

granite deforms into layered gneiss during movement along

the Catalina detachment fault

Central Tucson Mountains Tucson basin-filling

sediments 5,000 feet thick

Figure 1 Recent geologic history of the Tucson region explained by four East-West cross-sections

illustrating the formation of the basin and range landscape (adapted from Scarborough 2015).

The Tucson basin: Natural and human history 29

the summer monsoons Comrie and Glenn (1998) discussed the influence of various

precipitation regimes in the US Southwest and Northern Mexico, and showed that the

Tucson basin is influenced by two regional components The “monsoon’’ component

is characterized by important summer precipitation from June to October in the

form of convective storms of short duration and high intensity, while the “desert”

component is characterized by very low precipitation all year but with the lowest

values in early summer and a slight increase in winter (Figure 3).

Figure 2 Global atmospheric circulation patterns (left) and the effect of the Intertropical Convergence

Zone and the Hadley Cells on the aridity of sub-tropical latitudes (right) (Credit: left: NASA/

JPL-Caltech; right: Moeller, 2013).

Figure 3 Average flow patterns and moisture air mass boundaries for winter (left) and summer (right)

(adapted from Crimmins, 2006); and average monthly rainfall of the desert and monsoon regimes affecting the Tucson region (Comrie and Glenn, 1998).