Wet Chino, Dry Chino...

Reading Candace McNulty's latest Verde River article in ReadItHere News reminded me that I had located scans of the Sullivan Lake dam in flood. The picture above was taken last year in July; there is no water to be seen. Nada.

Here's what happens after a really major storm or a big melt in the mountains following heavy snow. (The Big Chino drains everything from Granite Mountain north almost to the edge of the Grand Canyon.) That water, by the way, is several feet above the top of the dam! The roar is deafening; one appreciates the power of water after seeing such a flood.

Note the color of the water -- all that mud is the reason the dam is totally silted up. FYI: the pictures were taken by my late husband in September 1994.

However, this is all surface water -- important way downstream to help fill Horseshoe and Bartlett dams for the people of Phoenix. What matters up in these parts is a major sub-surface basin in the Big Chino.

Getting back to McNulty's article, it's well worth a careful read. She's been writing about the fate of the upper Verde River for several months now. The general upshot is that current plans for Big Chino water by Prescott/PV and Chino Valley will likely dry up the top end of the river. The one factor she misses is that even if the cities were, miraculously, to forego the water ... the spectre of development at the far end of the Big Chino is still leering at us. Fred Ruskin's Yavapai Ranch is likely to be the Next Big Thing in real estate. The water is there, so it will be mined, by one party or another. Too damned bad. It's sometimes called "progress."

Ruined Rivers Series

(Note: when I started this blog, my resolution was to avoid the usual blog subjects: politics, Armageddon, the president, war, angst, politics. But there's one serious subject I can't avoid if I want to continue a pleasant existence up in the Arizona mountains -- water...GrannyJ)

Before I pull myself together to work on yesterday/today's blog (my visitors just left for the heat of the Valley and airport fun and games), I must mention the new series running in the Arizona Republic -- "Ruined Rivers," it is called.

If you don't take the Republic, you can see the series (and other background) here. And there's even a water-oriented blog by Shaun McKinnon best accessed from the same site. By all means, read it. The big article is by no means friendly toward Prescott's new water farm up the Big Chino.

And it was apparently written before SunCor's announcement of plans to develop some 15,000 acres of the Yavapai Ranch way up the Big Chino. (So that's why Carol Springer & other folk have been so adamant about widening Williamson Valley Road -- it wasn't the Las Vegas ranch, after all.)

Admittedly, Phoenix has a vested interest in what happens to water upstream. In fact, the Salt River Project tends to get pretty proprietary about the Verde. I don't think they worry too much about Prescott, as such.

But, hey, I love the upper Verde. For instance, have you ever been to Hell Point? It's a beautiful area that hasn't been ruined by tourism or party-ers. Lack of water could do it in pretty fast, though.

I wish the article had given some ideas on how to solve the water vs. developer problem that we face.