Summer flowers on Verde River
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Yavapai Group, Grand Canyon Chapter, Sierra Club
Newsletter March '09
Benedictio
by Edward Abbey
Benedictio: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing
views. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering
through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark
primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down
into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottoes of endless stone, and down
again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer
walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for
you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls,
So long.
Edward Abbey
Pipeline Update: Big Chino Aquifer Model Predicts Verde Harm
By Gary Beverly
Will the Big Chino Pipeline harm the Verde River?
That's the core issue of contention between Prescott and conservationists.
Prescott maintains that the distant location of their water ranch, 17 miles up the valley from the headwaters springs of the Upper Verde River, assures that their water export will not diminish Verde Springs.
Science says otherwise. Based on the best scientific hydrology studies by the US Geological Survey, there is a groundwater connection between Prescott's water ranch and Verde Springs. Additionally, basic hydrological principles confirm that water withdrawals from the aquifer will diminish the spring flow.
To understand the hydrology, imagine the Big Chino Aquifer (BCA) as an old clawfoot bathtub with an overflow drain high on one end - that's Verde Springs. As water pours into the tub (infiltration from precipitation), the water level in the tub rises until it reaches the overflow, then the water level remains constant because the amount of water flowing into the tub flows out through the overflow. This represents the "predevelopment" condition of the BCA. Now, if you pump water from the tub, or if precipitation lessens, the overflow (Verde Springs) lessens by that same amount. If the water withdrawal is greater than the inflow the overflow will stop, the water level in the tub will drop, and eventually the tub will be empty representing an aquifer in overdraft (like the Little Chino Aquifer is now). Scientists call this simple thought experiment a "mass balance", showing that removing water from the aquifer must diminish Verde Springs.
However, our thought experiment doesn't reveal how quickly pumping will diminish the springs. To answer that, a complex computer model is required, and that has been missing until now.
SRP has released preliminary results of the best study to date on the BCA, prepared by the respected hydrologist Jon Ford. The groundwater model covers the entire Big Chino Aquifer, over 800 square miles. Using Prescott's data, updated population estimates, thousands of well logs, and the latest geology, the model predicts that by 2110 the pipeline will cut the upper Verde's base flow to less than half of the current flow, possibly to less than a third, and that "eventually the flow would be zero because net pumping exceeds recharge."
The bad news is, as we have vigorously argued to Prescott, the Upper Verde River will be seriously damaged by their pumping. The good news is that we have time to protect the river. The springs will not suddenly dry up leaving 25 miles of river as a dry wash in a few decades, as we had feared.
The Verde River is a national treasure, one of the last free flowing streams in Arizona and a vital migration path for hundreds of species. The River supports much of Arizona's surviving cottonwood/willow forests, an essential habitat for ten species watched over by the Endangered Species Act, including our national symbol, the Bald Eagle.
I ask the citizens of Prescott to save the Verde River by rejecting this environmentally disastrous pipeline. Prescott has enough water and enough time to find an environmentally benign water source.
Please express your opinion to governmental officials. Email us to request an action list with addresses and talking points.
This page was last updated on May 26, 2009