By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Two key members of the Governor's Water Policy Council have quit, potentially threatening the chances of any action to deal with a depleting water supply in rural Arizona.
Stefanie Smallhouse, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, told Capitol Media Services she can't remain on a council that is pushing ahead with plans to regulate agricultural use in a way that could override the interests of the farmers who have been there for generations.
Most notably, Smallhouse said the majority has rejected what she says are key principles to ensuring that farmers and rural residents have a voice in how local water conservation districts are formed and governed. And that, she said, starts with requiring the consent of area residents who would get to vote on these issues.
Instead, Smallhouse said, the council appears to be giving the key authority to the state Department of Water Resources, with Director Tom Buschatzke given final say over creating what she said would be rural equivalents of the "active management areas'' that now exist in more urban parts of the state, complete with restrictive rules.
Sen. Sine Kerr, R-Buckeye, another council member and a dairy farmer, was even more direct in her decision to quit.
"The Governor's Water Policy Council is nothing more than a forum to rubber stamp the progressive environmental goals of special interest groups,'' she said in a prepared statement. "The radical agenda being pushed as the potential to damage our economy and kill the livelihoods of our farmers and ranchers.''
And in her resignation letter to the governor, she said the 38-member panel, with only two representatives from agriculture, appears headed to recommending creation of "local groundwater stewardship areas,'' something she said is "California-style regulatory overreach.''
Hobbs press aide Christian Slater said Smallhouse and Kerr "are doing a disservice to rural farmers and depriving them of a voice at the table.''
The resignations will not stop the work of the council which is supposed to make recommendations for changes in state law to the Legislature. But the withdrawal of the Arizona Farm Bureau and Kerr could make it difficult to get a majority of lawmakers to agree on what the remaining panel members recommend.
Failure to get legislative consensus, though, does not mean that rural groundwater withdrawal will be able to continue without regulation.
Attorney General Kris Mayes has argued that the Department of Water Resources is already required to determine if there should be new "active management areas'' where legal restrictions are imposed on the withdrawal and use of groundwater. And that raises the possibility that Buschtzke could unilaterally enact pumping restrictions that could be even more comprehensive than anything the council might propose.
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University and a member of the governor's council, said its purpose is not to impose restrictions.
"What the council has been discussing is how to empower local communities to opt into groundwater regulation when it's needed,'' she told Capitol Media Services. But Porter said the fear that Smallhouse and Kerr express is that whatever is enacted won't pay sufficient attention to the water needs of agriculture.
"It was always going to be a very difficult conversation,'' she said.
Porter said the goal of the council is to come up with an alternative to what is now available to manage groundwater withdrawal.
At one extreme, she said, are active management areas.
"The regulation of active management areas is really extensive and complex,'' she said, with across-the-board conservation measures that are tightened every 10 years.
At the other end are "irrigation non-expansion areas.'' Porter said they come in two forms.
One prohibits no new irrigation using groundwater. Another includes only metering and reporting of groundwater use.
"What this committee is trying to do is come up with something that is a much lighter form of regulation'' than the AMAs, she said, but with more teeth than an INA, the only other available alternative. "The committee has been trying to invent something in between that is more adapted to the needs of a particular community and their particular challenges.''
And she said it would include input from various interests in each community.
It is that question of "input'' that concerns Smallhouse who raises cattle in Redington in rural Pima County as well as grows forage crops.
The majority of the council has said the the process of setting up a regulatory framework could be initiated either by resolution of the county board of supervisors or a petition by a percentage of area registered voters. Smallhouse and Kerr, however, want the only option to be a petition signed by a majority of residents or a majority of groundwater users.
And the majority would give Buschatzke or his successors the final authority to set up the district.
That, Smallhouse said, is not acceptable. She said only a majority election of those affected -- meaning those living in the groundwater basin to be regulated -- should be able to impose new layer of government.
"The committee will not hear it,'' Smallhouse said.
Smallhouse said the farmers do want a role.
"We think generationally,'' she said.
"And so we want to do something,'' Smallhouse said. "And we have a handful of principles, things we just have to have in order to make this work in an area where this is our only source of water,'' unlike other areas of the state that have options like water from the Colorado River.
That starts with a local election.
"Everybody badmouths that, for whatever reason,'' she said, and the council moves on.
"And so at some point, as a participant, I have to ask myself, 'Am I getting anything accomplished for the people that I'm here for,' '' Smallhouse said. "Or am I just going to be a rubber stamp on a product for December.
Slater defended the work of the council and took a swat at Smallhouse and Kerr.
"By refusing to work with diverse stakeholders at the table, the exiting members are doing a disservice to rural farmers and depriving them of a voice at the table while alternatives to AMAs and INAs are being considered,'' he said. But Slater acknowledged that the decisions of the pair to quit do create a hurdle.
"The resignations ... make it more likely that state leaders charged with protecting our water future will be left without alternatives to implementing AMAs and INAs,'' he said.
Smallhouse and Kerr are not the only ones with concerns where the council is headed.
"The agenda was obvious from the beginning,'' said Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, also a council member. "Most of the members were not interested in the natural resources industries, our rural communities and the people we represent.''
Griffin told Capitol Media Services she doesn't intend to quit but said she is "feeling the same frustration'' and that those representing cities on the panel `want to control everyone.''
Governing aside, Smallouse said there are other issues, including whether there will be "certificated water rights.''
What that means, said Smallhouse, is that a farmer has the right to continue using the water he or she was using before, be able to transfer it to somewhere else in the same basin or even get credit for trying to create a market for a crop that uses less water.
What is being proposed, she said, amounts to a use-it-or-lose-it system.
"So where is the incentive for a farmer to take that risk?'' Smallhouse asked. "It's always in the farmers interest to keep doing what he's doing,'' even if it means sticking with the more water-intensive crop rather than lose the water right.
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