In a previous column entitled La Nina: Good for Some, Bad for Others LA NIÑA: GOOD FOR SOME, BAD FOR OTHERS (cactusreports.com) I wrote about the affects of the cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean on weather patterns in the West. For Northern California, La Nina usually brings cooler temperatures, rain and snow at the higher elevations. In Arizona and the mountains of Colorado, La Nina often brings warmer dryer weather.
Until recently, both areas had warmer and dryer weather. Heavy December rains, however, have raised Northern California’s Lake Oroville, the largest reservoir in the state, 89 feet in the last month.
Recently Colorado’s Western Slope has defied the La Nina trend and this area as well has received heavy snowfall with some areas receiving over 100 percent of average snowfall to date. Western Slope snowpack rises above average but forecast for eastern plains remains "bleak" (denverpost.com)
Arizona received heavy rainfall this past summer, but depending on whose statistics you use, the state has been in drought since either 1995 or 2000. Drought - Arizona State Climate Office (asu.edu) 26 years or 21 years. Arizona | Drought.gov. Interspersed in those periods have been a few wetter years, but the state still has a precipitation deficit over the last two decades.
Debbie Downer Wannabe in her lair
Wilmusrandolph
Let’s be real . . . Climatologists can be such Debbie Downers . . . always bringing us bad news. Would a little hope now and then ruin the narrative that much? Like the fact that Lake Oroville has risen 89 feet and Oroville Dam has resumed producing hydropower. Like the fact that the snowpack in Colorado’s Western Slope, which has a large bearing on Colorado River runoff, currently sits at average or above. How about the great monsoon rains Arizona had over the summer? The most active monsoon since the 1950’s, it supplied almost 250,000 acre feet of much needed water to Central Arizona.
None of these events by themselves will lift the West out of drought. Yes, we still need to conserve water in Arizona’s growing cities. One can argue for some type of water augmentation as well. My political philosophy and general outlook on life, however, is that Americans figure out ways to get things done. We did not build our country on the idea that we’re all going to die in 12 years!
It would be irresponsible to stick our heads in the sand and pretend we can just keep on doing what we have done and expect that things will just work out. Getting Rep. Regina Cobb’s Rural Management Area (RMA) bill passed would be a great sequel to the Drought Contingency Plan the legislature passed in 2019. The RMA would give localities the tools to manage their declining groundwater levels. Currently, these rural areas find themselves at the mercy of anyone who wants to come and pump an unlimited amount of groundwater from their aquifers.
Legislation allowing the Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) to look at prospective groundwater pumping by large out-of-state corporate farms would also protect rural interests outside of Arizona’s Active Management Areas. Allowing the ADWR director to make a determination on reasonable prospective use in order to declare a moratorium on the expansion of irrigable acres would also be another tool to stop the rapid decline of groundwater levels in parts of Rural Arizona.
We don’t have to have a Debbie Downer attitude about our state’s future. Working together we can figure out ways to move in a positive direction on Arizona’s water issues and hopefully this year we will again.