![]() In explaining its model and assumptions at a meeting earlier this month, the Department of Water Resources said it factored in decreases to agricultural pumping, for example, and use of stored water credits, and the aquifer still comes up short. The study is scheduled to be done in 2021. “The basin study attempts to look at the effects of climate scenarios, demand scenarios, and then identifies what are the effects resulting from that,” said Kevin Black with the Bureau of Reclamation. It has a different geographic outline than Arizona’s model but will build upon it, and also examine different climate change scenarios. But if you want to predict, is my bank account going to continue to go down if I continue living this way? That prediction’s probably pretty strong.”Īnother study of the Pinal County underground water basin is underway, partly funded by the Bureau of Reclamation and partnering with the state and others. “And you’ll be wrong, because it’s going to be very hard to predict exactly the bills and exactly your salary. “You could put together spreadsheets and models of your bank account and you could do lots of different manipulations to predict exactly when your bank account will go to zero,” Tonkin said. He said the significance of a model is not it’s precision, but how it’s used to make choices. ![]() His company reviewed the Pinal model in 2016, and Tonkin recalled the state water department wanting rigorous feedback on its work. Regulatory agencies tend to be conservative, said Matthew Tonkin, president of the hydrogeology consulting firm S.S. That’s how it arrived at its estimate of more than 8 million acre-feet in unmet demand over 100 years. The state then fed assumptions into that model, including assumptions about how much water farmers may pump and how quickly water storage credits might be redeemed. It accounts for different soil densities, how they interact and how water moves through it. The groundwater model is an attempt to mathematically simulate the behavior of the aquifer. “It’s just that we can’t use it because of the way they’ve set this thing up.” “It isn’t that the water isn’t there or that we couldn’t pump it,” Johnson said. The state’s report said about 62% of the unmet demand comes from the ag sector, about 24% from planned-yet-unbuilt development outside municipalities, and 10% from existing municipalities and industry. Other sources of frustration are the rules around allocating the aquifer, and predicting how much each sector – agriculture, municipal, or tribal – is pumping. “That’s a very big concern for us.”Ī lower designation – the kind of approval sought by municipalities – could mean limiting growth in cities and towns. “So the next designation period, between 20, they may bring our designation down,” Salas said. And if that makes the aquifer look bad, that might affect the next time the state reviews Florence’s Assured Water Supply designation. Christopher Salas, public works director for Florence, said the estimates of groundwater pumping are too high.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |