The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Coming up today on The Press Room, it's as precious as gold and in some cases, maybe even more special.

We're talking water in Tucson and southern Arizona with a special guest from the University of Arizona and a panel of trusted journalists.

I'm David Lee and The Press Room starts right now.

[Music] Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director David Lee and we have a distinguished panel with us today.

Joining me we have the Director of Water Resources Research Center, Dr.

Sharon Megdal.

Thank you very much.

We also have Paul Ingram from the Tucson Sentinel, Tony Davis from the Arizona Daily Star and Katya Mendoza from AZPM News.

We'll get to water in just a bit, but first we want to talk briefly about a story that broke earlier this week on labor rights activist Cesar Chavez.

Chavez has been accused of sexual abuse of minors and women including Dolores Huerta who co-founded the United Former Workers Union with Chavez in 1960s.

Paul, this is really shocking news.

It is really shocking news and I think it comes down it's really painful for the community.

Cesar Chavez was somebody who was lionized as a leader of the workers' rights movement.

And as somebody who was really kind of important to a lot of people.

I know people who had posters of him up in their houses who really liked him, thought a lot of him.

And to have this news and find out that he was actually this other kind of person I think is really, people say painful and I think that's about right.

It's just hard to see someone that maybe you thought was a hero suddenly turned out to be a bad person.

Yeah, Katya, you know there were a number of marches and events scheduled all throughout the weekend honoring Chavez, includi here in Tucson.

But when the news came out about the allegations, around the world and here in particular, people and counties changed and scrambl to cancel some of these, make changes.

What are the plans here for Tucson?

At least here locally we have seen a name change for a local rally instead of the Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta March & Rally.

It has been, it has since been changed to the Comunidad y Labor Unity Fair, centering the labor movement.

Just to echo a little bit about what Paul was saying these allegations have been devastating for a lot of people involved.

This person was a hero of the Latino civil rights movement, but so is Dolores Huerta.

And so I think it's going to take some time for not only those actively involved in the community to process and consider next steps, but I think it's going to take some time for those impacted, those survivors to heal and we'll see how this plays out.

Okay, we'll continue to cover this event as it moves forward.

You can follow it at azpmnews.org.

Meanwhile, though, we want to talk water.

It is so important, especially the Colorado River.

Dr.

Megdal, you know, there are seven western states that can't seem to figure out how to, I guess, play nicely when it comes to the Colorado River, specifically with the allocations.

Can we start with maybe a brief background for our audience, maybe some of the challenges in negotiating this from the first start?

And then what led to the states missing a really important deadline last month?

Well, the Colorado River management and allocations, these are very complex issues.

They go back to the 1920s and the compact.

But the bottom line is that the Colorado River is producing much less water, mother nature, the snowpack, the runoff, much below what was expected 100 years ago and what was divvied up among the seven US states that are part of the basin, the Republic of Mexico.

And we do need to note there are 30 indigenous nations, native nations that are part of the basin.

And so they came up with a kind of approach to splitting the water.

That was okay when we had wet years or people hadn't grown into all the demand.

But since the early 2000s, we've really been in a mega drought, where we've had less than what was the historical average of precipitation and runoff.

And yet we've had growth and increased demands.

And so 20 years ago, the states did come together with the federal government and negotiated a mechanism for sharing the shortages in the river as well as the surplus.

But if you think about the family eating the pie, right?

It's not so hard to divvy it up when the pie is nice and big, right?

But when the pie is shrinking and small, and everybo thinks they've got their share and there's not enough to spread around, that's difficult.

And that's the situation we're in now, in that the river flows are much lower than they have been historically.

There's not enough to meet everybody's expectations.

And the agreement from 20 years ago is expiring.

So we have to have a new agreement.

And that's where we've just run into roadblocks.

After multiple years of negotiations, the states can't agree.

Tony, since the states weren't able to make this deadline, we now have federal government kind of stepping in.

What will it look like, do you think, for Arizona?

Well, I just want to add one thing to what Sharon said first.

The important thing to note about the Colorado River Compact and the allocations is that even in 1922, the amount that was allocated to the seven states and Mexico was more than the river was actually carrying.

Except for one very brief 15 or 20 year period when it was running well.

So we've always been under the eight ball.

And it's just gotten much worse now because of the hotter weather and the drier weather.

In terms of how this affects Arizona, you know, the Arizona itself feels like it's behind the eight ball.

They are putting out studies and videos and saying they're about to get socked and the economy is going to be flattened.

There's five alternative proposals that the Bureau of Reclamation analyzed for an environmental impact statement.

And of those five, only one of them apparentl was designed to be carried out if all the states don't agree.

And the federal government has to put out a plan.

And that proposal cuts the Central Arizona Project in Arizona by 77 percent.

Another one of those proposals would cut it by 98 percent.

And, you know, there's no way that's good for Arizona.

You know, we depend on the Colorado River for our drinking water here in Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale, you know, to lesser of an extent, places like Oro Valley.

And it's going to be a hit.

Yeah.

Katya, you know, Dr.

Megdal brought it up.

You know, there are about 40 million folks of the seven states, parts of Mexico and Native American tribes that all depend on this Colorado River.

But also, especially when it comes to farming.

Yes, agriculture is a huge consumer of Colorado River water in terms of speaking on behalf of Arizona or not on behalf of Arizona.

There are about six million users within Arizona who rely on Colorado, Colorado River water for various reasons, either drinking water, agriculture.

There's also hydropower.

Just looking forward to and piggybacking off of what Tony said, you know, considering how contentious these negotiations between the lower basin and upper basin states have been.

Governor Katie Hobbs specificall has been advocating for more federal intervention in terms of figuring out the allocations.

She has said that, you know, Arizona has already taken cuts.

Other states should be stepping up.

OK.

Paul, can you share a little bit about or speak to the issue in terms of the Southern Arizona CAP use in particular in terms of the water and how that could affect Tucson?

Sure.

To a point.

I mean, one thing to keep in mind about our CAP use is that we've been banking a lot of the CAP water.

We're putting it into the Avra Valley, letting it infiltrate.

The idea is to kind of fill up the aquifer.

There's complicated reasons for why we decided to do that, but simply we've been banking that water.

Some of it, most of it.

I mean, I think about the term, like, which is, cgoes back to Arizona, which is just the phrase that whiskey is for, you know, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.

Water has been a huge issue for this entire time, as Tony pointed out.

I mean, the compact was done in the 20s and we're still at the same issues.

And ultimately, the state has to figure out how to deal with this sudden shortage of water.

And to Katya's point, it's really think about like most of the winter vegetables that are grown for the United States.

They come from Yuma Valley and that is fed into almost entirely by Colorado River water.

Well, I'll put this out for the table.

We're obviously in a politically divisive time right now, just in general.

When it comes to the water in the western water crisis, is this a bipartisan issue?

Is this left and right clashing over different aspects?

Or is this about just simply water conservation?

Well, we're all ready for an answer here, but if I could make just a couple quick points.

And that is, so I'm a professor, I teach, I give a lot of community talks and so forth.

And one of the points I like to make is that everybody isn't in the same situation, even in the state of Arizona.

So if you want to talk about leafy green vegetables, they're largely produced out in Yuma.

They have more senior rights to Colorado River water than Central Arizona does.

And so the farming that was dependent on CAP, or Central Arizona Project water already has been hit.

And so we can't just make broad conclusions very quickly about who's going to get hit hard.

It won't be good for the state.

We'll all agree on that.

So I want to mention that.

And then I'll let the others go in with their points that they were going to make.

Maybe actually that's worth talking about is who is most likely to get hit by real cuts?

Who's first?

Central Arizona project is first.

But specifically, what does that mean?

Who gets hit by that?

Oh, who within them?

Who within them?

Yes.

So first has been Central Arizona agriculture.

They've already had most of their water cut off.

And then there's another tier below that, that actually hit some tribal nations as well as city of Phoenix and others.

And then there's the municipal and industrial and Indian water.

You know, there's a block chart that shows it.

They're the next in line.

They have not been hit yet.

Those other first two have.

And at the very bottom, it's really interesting.

There's what's called P3 water.

That's actually not in the category of CAP water, but it's delivered through the Central Arizona project.

Some of that is from Indian water settlements.

And I've been waiting to get the answers.

How little can you reasonably push through the Central Arizona Project and still have water in it?

Tony.

I was going to say about the political side of this.

You know, the partisans is going to come when the legislature decides what to do about it because the Republicans want to get rid of regulations and a couple of them want to build more dams.

And the Democrats want more mandatory conservation, etc.

I would say in general, however, the differences are sectional rather than partisan.

You know, it's like it's not the Democrats versus the Republicans over this.

It's the Democrats and Republica in Arizona versus the Democrats and Republi in Utah.

And on a very personal note, there is a farmer I interview with some regularity who lives in who works in Yuma and the Imperial Valley.

And he is very, very politically conservative, very politically conservative.

But he is very much very concerned, if not alarmed about the future of the Colorado River and how it's going to affect his farm and how it's going to affect society.

He's more pessimistic about how much water we're going to get than most of the scientists that I talked to.

So it's not really a partisan issue.

Okay, Tony, you recently wrote an interesting article about the Colorado River saying that because of the hot temperatures and we are about to go into a real hot phase here over the next couple of days, you said that that really threatens the Colorado River Basin, putting it to the edge of disaster.

Tell me a little bit about that.

Well, this gets into a lot of numbers.

But basically, they were hoping that we would get, you know, I hate to use this word, but like four or five million acre feet going into Lake Powell in the spring and early summer.

Well, and then a couple weeks ago, they lowered it down to 2.3 million acre feet.

And now just this week, they lowered it to 1.75 million acre feet.

As it gets hotter, there's more evaporation.

You'll even have some snow instead of melting.

It just vaporizes and goes into the air.

In terms of acre feet, a million acre feet of a few years ago, that's how much we were getting out of the Central Arizona Project.

Now it's down to 900,000.

You know, if the cuts happen, it'll be 500,000 or 600,000 or less.

I'm just trying to explain what an acre foot is.

You know, a disaster would mean if this year, next year, if it got to the point where we're only getting, we're supposed to get seven and a half million acre feet from Lake Powell coming into the lower basin.

But it's going to be less than that this year, maybe six million.

And next year, if there isn't a lot more rain or snow during the winter, it could be four or five million we're going to get.

And everybody's going to have to start cutting back immediately, regardless of what the states agree on or don't agree on.

There's just simply not going to be enough water to serve what we're used to.

Okay, Dr.

Megdal, you know, as the head of the Water Resources Research Center here at the U of A, I know you got a big conferen kind of coming up.

A lot of folks in your world are probably not only just talking about the news, but what are some of the solutions?

What are you hearing?

What are you seeing?

Well, there are there are lots of opportunities for solutions.

And let's let's start with the low hanging fruit is always conserving water using less.

And that's one thing I always want people to remember.

We'll talk about less supply.

But we're not going to sit here, I don't believe, and keep using water the way we have when it's been more relatively more plentiful.

So conservation, using less when you look at residential use in the city.

And again, it talks about who are you talking about?

But outdoor water use by residen can be 40% up to as high in some places in the Phoenix area 70%.

So there's there's room for adjustment.

There's room for more reuse of water, which we're doing this Tucson Water One Water concept is really the way to look at it.

What are the water resources available?

How do we optimize the use of it?

I hate to use the word maximize the use of it because we want people to use it wisely, not maximize the use.

And then there's still talk about water importation.

There's talk about treating low quality water that historically we have not treated, such as salty or brackish groundwater.

And so we will have to look at other options.

People do think that there's great room for augmentation.

But I will tell you from our prior conferences, this one coming up isn't so much looking at that.

But it is looking at water for tech, mining and energy.

So I want to put in a plug for that April 14 and 15.

But we've had people come in with solutions.

And one person will think they've got the solution and the person next to me will say, that's crazy.

That will never work.

My solution will work.

And so the water infrastructure finance authority has a long term water augmentati exercise going full disclosure on part of one of the teams that's working on it.

But we have to have, you know, kind of all hands on deck, all options on the table.

And we have to recognize they're not going to be cheap if we're looking at bringing in new water.

But people are people are working on solutions all the time.

And one of them I just want to mention that I think is so important is we're still a growing state.

How you design your new communities, your buildings and so forth really has a lot to do with that built-in water demand.

A good segue here because we want to talk a little bit about mining and how water with mining and tech and energy can affect so much.

Probably not going to get to everything on this.

But earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an injunction to halt mining at Oak Flat, Katya.

What is the significance of this ruling?

Well, Oak Flat is a sacred place to the Apache people and other indigenous communities.

This case has made it all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Just going back off of what happened last week, the appeals court denying multiple requests to block the land transfer of the place to resolution copper.

This is also another devastating decision on behalf of the courts.

I do want to add that at least Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva had attempted to block this land transfer.

She had proposed a bill, the Save Oak Flat for Mining Act to prevent this land transfer from happening.

Okay, Paul, you wrote recently an article about the possible block of an auction for 160 acres of state owned land at Santa Rita Mountains that were slated for mine.

Yeah, so what's happening here is that there's 160 acres that's in the state trust land and Copper World, which is the company that wants to build a copper mine in the Santa Ritas, wants to also buy that chunk of land.

It's really there in part for mine tailings, but also for some infrastructure.

And it's part of a land.

It's in an interesting place because it's kind of hemmed in by Copper World's land, but it's also state land, but there's also the Coronado National Forest.

So it's, and it's also against the Santa Rita Experimental Range, which is an area that's kind of protected and run by the U of A. And so there's been a group that's asked for Governor Hobbs to block this transfer.

Hobbs has said this isn't something that she can do.

You know, instead, that this is something that happens to go forward.

There's a question about whether or not the land was actually appraised correctly, how they appraised it and whether the value of it.

Because one thing to keep in mind about state land trust is that the state is there to hold the land and trust and of course sell that land and or manage that land that money is supposed to go into education.

So there's a question about that.

It's part of, I think, what is a much bigger push towards building a lot more copper mines in Arizona or restarting old copper mines.

One of the things that's clear is that there's a lot of precious metals that people want to mine.

The market's really good for that.

And we also see other kinds of mining too.

For instance, there's a mine in the Patagonias that's for zinc and manganese.

It also maybe has a little bit of copper.

There's been a really big push.

And of course, the thing that came up about mines is that mines are typically really massive water users.

It's just it's a water intensive process.

And so all of these things come back to, I think, the central issues, which is, you know, how much is, how much water is available and also what do we do about the future of Arizona.

Tony, what's some of the concern though, is also that this does well, at least they'll say they'll it'll provide a lot of jobs.

You know what, how do you weigh the need for jobs and the use of jobs versus the environmental aspect of this?

You know, I can't really say how I would do it.

I mean, the state has to make those kind of decisions or the or the local governments, but mainly the state because they give permits.

And the bottom line is typically most of the decisions that have been made in Arizona have been in favor of the mining industry.

And then once in a while, something gets turned down.

A lot of times, like with the Rosemont Mine, which was going to be east of where Copper Road is, it was stopped by the courts.

The state wants the jobs.

They want economic development and they feel that the environmental consequences can be mitigated.

And of course, the environmental are completely opposed to that idea.

The one thing I would say about the mines and water is we have a groundwater management act in Arizona.

And it limits agriculture use and it limits urban use, but it does not limit mining use.

The mines get to get a permit, but the permit allows them to take whatever they want because that's the way the law was written back in 1980.

So I don't know how you balance something like that, but it's a really tough, complicated decision.

And so far, the industry has been winged and I don't know that that's going to change.

You know, obviously, mineral extraction or sort of is a societal need.

A lot of people don't want that kind of industry in their region.

There are a lot of concerns about air quality, water use, water quality impacts and overall quality of life issues.

We'll start with you, Katya.

How do you strike a balance here with the needs of the company and the community?

I think that's a question a lot of people are trying to answer just, you know, based off of our conversation about, you know, pending water cuts, but also Arizona is becoming a data center hub, for example, or a place for large industrial users of water.

This also makes me think of the fact that this current administration is friendly towards industry.

What I mean by that is, you know, I'm considering President Trump's executive order to unleash American energy and the federal support and push to utilize our public lands in the sense of, you know, more mines or more development.

Okay.

This is the time of the show where we normally reach out and remind folks that if you have a viewer question, please make sure you send it over to azpm.org slash press room.

You can also write a question on our YouTube page and we'll open it up for the group.

Today's question is actually from a comment based on a story you did, Katya.

The comment was, what these new AI data groups must do is to construct their own community power plants.

They would have their own gas meter and from their power plant be able to go 24/7/365, receive all of the power required without taking some from the national grid.

With their own air-cooled cooling systems, they are not taking community water.

So I guess the question for the group is how possible is it for developments like that to actually do that?

I mean, that's a really interesting question.

I mean, if you're running natural gas, you're getting the natural gas from somewhere.

If you want to produce your own power, you there are other solutions.

But I mean, one of the main ones is, of course, large amounts of solar.

You have to have a lot of land to do that and funding to build those kinds of things.

It's certainly true that data centers can probably build these things.

But for the large degree, data centers haven't done that.

They've really relied on local power because they're really massive power users.

They just use a lot of the current Project Blue, which is one of the ones that's going to be here, wants to use 286 megawatts.

That's a lot of solar cells and or something other.

And they have to build that.

So all these places typically run generators, which means they're running diesel generators all the time, which means they're creating pollution.

They're creating noise.

There's big questions about what that means.

And I think ultimately, what does it mean?

How did the center's do this?

That's an open question.

Tony?

One thing about data centers and energy is that solar energy for all of its ecological benefits, it only it only runs full blast during the daytime.

And now they have battery storage.

But even the battery storage that can store it for use at night is only good for four or five hours.

So I don't think we're at a stage yet technologically where we could just run a data center on purely solar energy, meaning that if you have a lot of requirements from data centers, you have a lot of them, you're going to have to build more gas plants or coal plants or whatever.

It's not going to be all renewable energy for everybody.

So you're going to have you talk about trade offs.

You're going to have trade offs.

We could go on and on for a long time on this, but we are wrapping up the show now.

So Dr.

Megdal, Tony Davis, Paul Ingram and Katya Mendoza, thank you all for your time today and thank you all at home for watching and listening.

I'm David Lee.

This is The Press Room.

We'll see you next week.