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SIERRA VISTA — In spite of opposition in the Bureau of Reclamation’s office in Washington D.C., to a bill proposed to fund a water project study in the Sierra Vista Subwatershed, local officials are optimistic the bill will pass.
In his capacity as a member of the Upper San Pedro Partnership’s executive committee, Sierra Vista City Manager Chuck Potucek testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday at the nation’s capital.
Potucek told the subcommittee that the local Bureau of Reclamation office is a member of the partnership, as is the city of Sierra Vista, and the city has served as the fiscal agent for the partnership since its inception seven years ago.
Senate Bill 1929 calls for about $1.2 million for the Bureau of Reclamation to do an in-depth feasibility study to follow up an already completed and more general appraisal by the bureau that has taken place in recent years.
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Mayor Bob Strain, who is also on the partnership’s executive committee, said Potucek’s testimony was apt, and he expects the bill to be approved.
“We’re hoping so, I didn’t feel the Bureau of Reclamation’s testimony against was that strong,” Potucek said.
Five other bills were presented to the subcommittee at the hearing, all of which, unlike Senate Bill 1929, involved projects and not studies. For example, some large projects in California, Oklahoma and Texas were presented to the committee. Only one was backed by the Bureau of Reclamation at the hearings, Potucek said.
“We were the only ones looking for study money,” he said. “They had concerns about where funding is going to come from locally for construction and ongoing maintenance. Obviously, all of that hasn’t been worked out, but with the partnership I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with the necessary agreements, and if the water district is a go, that could be used as another vehicle.”
Last March, Potucek testified before state House and Senate committees that each proposed bill enables the creation of a water district in the Upper San Pedro Basin. The Senate voted unanimously to allow voters to decide on such a new district — and possibly a new tax — in a future election.
Strain said last spring that the primary argument should not be about whether new taxes might result from the water district but rather about the future of Fort Huachuca’s current mission status and the life of the aquifer.
“I think budget dollars are tight. I did talk to the Bureau of Reclamation director and he recognized some of the issues we had, and I just think a lot of it has to do with funding, but I’m hoping that the feasibility study will find the best project and the most effective project, and will help us find our way through some of the legal and financial issues that are going to go along with it,” Potucek said. “And this is part of the process, and that’s what I told him. Beyond what Fort Huachuca gets, the Bureau of Reclamation is the only other game in town as far as working on large-scale capital projects, and I told him that we need to move forward and would be.”
Following testimonies at the hearing, the speakers were allowed time for commentary, and Potucek said he spoke about a good job done by Fort Huachuca in mitigating its groundwater use and about the programs such as rebates available in Sierra Vista and the city’s Environmental Operations Park.
The Bureau of Reclamation provided $1.5 million through a cooperative agreement with the city toward the reconstruction of the Environmental Operations Park, which went online in 2001 and is the biggest reclamation project in the subwatershed, recharging more than 2,000 acre-feet of water to the aquifer annually.
“I basically told them we need all three strategies — conservation, reclamation, which is reuse and recharge, and augmentation in order to assist the fort and help protect the river,” Potucek said.
The feasibility study would determine what the best next step is in terms of a Upper San Pedro Valley augmentation projects — perhaps involving stormwater capture and water table recharge. Other project ideas discussed in the Bureau of Reclamation appraisal conducted through the partnership are extracting for recharge the excess water flooding the Copper Queen Mine near Bisbee and the extension of the Central Arizona Project water pipeline to include the Sierra Vista Subwatershed.
The partnership comprises 21 government and non-governmental agencies and organizations working to deal with water resource issues in the Upper San Pedro River Valley.
The U.S. Congress, in recognizing the partnership, requires it to mitigate groundwater pumping deficit in the local aquifer by 2011, and to seek indefinite, sustainable use of the water table.
REPORTER Gentry Braswell can be reached at 515-4680.
don wrote on Mar 3, 2008 8:06 PM: