March 11, 2004
Shaun McKinnon
The Arizona Republic

FLAGSTAFF - Arizona's drought already would have triggered a statewide alert and perhaps forced widespread water restrictions if a plan outlined Wednesday were in place now.

The final plan from the Governor's Drought Task Force isn't due to Gov. Janet Napolitano until September. However, ideas discussed during a meeting on Wednesday include setting trigger points at various stages of a dry spell, beginning with the earliest signs of a drought and progressing through a full-on emergency.

"We hope that next time we have a drought, we're not surprised," said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona researcher on the task force.

Still to be decided is what would happen to Arizonans as a drought worsened:

• Could the state impose mandatory conservation measures, for example, or order the delivery of water to communities that run dry?

• Would a city like Tucson, which has already reduced its per capita water use, follow the same rules as Phoenix, where water use is higher?

The plan will get an immediate shakeout if climate experts are correct in their predictions that drought conditions are likely to get even worse. Two recent studies have added scientific girth to that theory, and several Arizona experts weighed in with similar forecasts Wednesday.

"There are no experts in the meteorological world who say this drought is over," said Tony Haffer, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service in Phoenix and an adviser to the task force. "The drought is here, and it's not going to change any time soon."

Haffer is co-chairman of the monitoring committee that, under the proposed plan, would recommend declaring a drought warning or emergency. That committee would include advisers from state and federal agencies, universities and water providers such as the Central Arizona Project and Indian tribes.

Committee members would meet regularly, whether a drought had been declared or not, and keep an eye on an array of weather and climate conditions and other indicators, such as reservoir levels, stream flow and soil moisture.

"We need advance warning going into a drought," Haffer said. "We don't want any false alarms."

The committee would notify the governor at the first signs of impending drought, a condition that would trigger a response from two other groups created by the drought plan. One is a network of local officials from around the state, the other a panel of state agency heads.

Those two groups would meet more regularly as drought conditions developed, sharing information and coordinating whatever responses were needed on a local or statewide level.

Haffer said there are holes in the existing system, such as a lack of snow-reporting stations outside the central mountain ranges and a dearth of long-term data at many weather stations. Those holes should be plugged to strengthen the drought plan over time.

The plan submitted to Napolitano will include a broad overview that details Arizona's existing water supplies, the economic, public-safety and public-health implications of a drought and details about how each stage of a drought alert is triggered.

The actual operations plan will be assembled in a separate document and widely distributed. It will outline the responsibilities of various agencies and spell out specific actions those agencies would take in specific situations.

Those actions could prompt the most discussion when the draft plan is released for public comment at the end of May. A series of public workshops is planned during the summer as the task force works on a final version.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0311droughtplan11.html