“It shouldn’t be like this,” said Honewer.
Surrounded by thickets of cacti and creosote, some residents consider it the first domino to fall as the Colorado River plunges further into crisis. On January 1, the city of Scottsdale, which gets most of its water from the Colorado River, cut off the Rio Verde foothills from the municipal water supply it has depended on for decades. The result is a disorienting and frightening lack of certainty about how residents will have enough water when the tanks run out in the coming weeks, allowing for bitter political feuds. influencing solutions.
The city’s decision and the inability to find a reliable alternative forced water carriers like Hornewer to scour distant towns for available gallons. About a quarter of the homes in the Rio Verde Foothills, a checkered pattern of one-acre parcels connected by dirt roads in an unincorporated area of Maricopa County, are drained from trucked-in municipal water pipes. depends on water. Since the cutoff, water bills have almost tripled. Other wells have wells, but many of these have dried up as the water table has dropped hundreds of feet in some places after years of drought.
“This is a very tough slap for everyone,” said Hornewer, who has been bringing water to his neighbors for more than 20 years. “It’s not sustainable. You can’t survive a summer like this.”
Prolonged drought and shrinking reservoirs have already placed unprecedented restrictions on the use of the Colorado River, and the federal government is now pressuring seven states to cut another 2 to 4 million acre feet. . This represents up to 30% of the river’s average annual discharge. The heavy rains and snow that hit California have not had a major impact on the Colorado River Basin, with major reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead declining to dangerous levels.
The severe forecast prompted Scottsdale to warn the Rio Verde Foothills over a year ago that it would cut off its water supply. City officials have stressed that their priority is their residents, Rio He views the Verde Foothills as a boomtown of irresponsible development, turning the city’s streets into rumbling, noisy water trucks. watered. “Given its unrestrained and unregulated growth, the city cannot be held responsible for another community’s water needs,” the city administrator’s office wrote in December.
Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega didn’t budge when a neighbor in the Rio Verde Foothills yelled foul.
“There is no Santa Claus,” he said statement last month. “The huge drought says it all. Water is not a game of mercy.”
In times of increasing urgency, residents of the Rio Verde Foothills have pursued two main options for finding new water sources, but bitter disagreements over the best solution have divided the community and left neighbors are at odds with each other.
Over the past few years, some residents have sought to form their own water bodies that would allow communities to purchase water from elsewhere in the state and import over 100 acre feet of their needs annually. Another group prefers to turn to her Epcor, a Canadian private utility company, to supply the community, as well as neighboring areas. So far, however, both approaches have failed due to political controversy.
A watershed plan that proponents said would give them long-term access to a reliable source of water was rejected by Maricopa County supervisors in August. He said he opposes adding a new layer of government to communities that value civil rights, especially those run by neighbors who have the power to condemn property to build infrastructure.
Galvin preferred Epcor, a utility regulated by the Arizona Corporation Commission if approved.
The water district “will be subject to the whim of five local laymen who serve on the board. Epcor cannot evaluate anything about these people unless the works council approves,” Galvin said. “For me, it was a smart plan overall.”
Scottsdale officials didn’t see it that way. To avoid disruption of service to Rio Verde Foothills, Epcor had to agree to treat the water it provides to Scottsdale, but the city has not agreed to do so.
Ortega’s office said he was unavailable for an interview.
As a result, the Rio Verde foothills do not have a clear path to solve the water problem. Some homeowners have filed lawsuits to challenge Maricopa County’s decision to close the water district. And a larger group of residents filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday, seeking an injunction against Scottsdale to force the city to reopen its water supply.
“What Scottsdale did is inhumane. Dangerous. They left us without fire protection. They left us without water for our families,” says lawyer seeking injunction. “Most of what we have now is palpable fear,” said resident Christy Jackman, who led the effort to raise thousands of dollars to pay for the .
Two days before cutoff, former emergency room doctor Stephen Coniaris filled a 5,000-gallon underground storage tank. His solar-powered home overlooking the McDowell Ranges was well equipped to survive the worst drought in 1,000 years. He had a small dishwasher. A litter box he consumes only 0.9 gallons per flush.
But this new dilemma is between Conialis and his His wife, Donna Rice, ventures into more extreme territory. They joined a Scottsdale gym for a shower. They carry their dirty clothes to a friend’s house or a laundromat. A plastic bucket in the backyard collects rainwater falling from the spouts from the roof, but infrequently, it is placed in her 3.5-gallon plastic jug placed in the bathroom to flush the toilet. .
“We pee outside,” Coniaris said over a lunch of chicken baked on paper plates to avoid washing the dishes.
As a result of these measures, the average couple’s water consumption decreased from 200 gallons per day last year to 30 gallons per day in the first week of January. Last year, as the cutoff deadline approached, some neighbors sold their homes while others witnessed a drop in real estate prices.
Rice said he had no plans to sell it, but he couldn’t imagine there would be much demand for it anyway.
“It would be crazy to buy our house at this point,” she said.
But the longer the Rio Verde foothills have to rely on distant water sources, the more difficult it will be to stay.
Cody Reim, who works for a company that installs metal roofs, typically pays $380 a month for the roughly 10,000 gallons he consumes with his wife and four young children. If his family continues to use water at the same pace, the new price will bring his next bill to $1,340 a month, he said. Roughly the same as his mortgage payment.
“It’s a life-changing sum for me,” he said.
Lime said he called or emailed all of his state and federal representatives, but most ignored his questions, and visited the state legislature last month to talk to the former governor of Arizona. On Tuesday, he took part in a protest at City Hall in Scottsdale — the city where his kids go to school and where his family does most of their shopping — to bring water for his community. request.
“I thought, ‘This is the United States. We do a lot of humanitarian aid to other countries that don’t have water, but they’re not going to let taxpayers in this county go without water.'” He said.
“You wouldn’t expect this to happen,” he added. “You have faith that there is help.”
“Are you going to fill this whole thing with water?”
At this time, it is backed by Hornewer and other water carriers servicing the Rio Verde Foothills.
Until this year, the family’s six trucks relied on a nearby Scottsdale gas station. He said it took about 15 minutes to fill up the 6,000-gallon tank, and he quickly coded into an automated system and received a ton of water.
On Saturday, he drove an hour to Apache Junction at 45 miles (about 45 miles). Here he is one of the few towns with gas stations nearby. Now it takes him 85 quarters (about 3 hours) to fill up.
“I will do what I have to do for the people,” he said. “But wow, this is getting silly.”
While Honewer waited, other people with personal water tanks loaded into trailers drove away, looking impatiently at his commercial hauler. A man in a cowboy hat and plaid shirt who was idling behind him eventually got out of his pickup and hung out. He hit Honewer’s tank with his fist.
“Are you going to fill all this with water?” he asked. “serious?”
The tedious process reduced the potential water load that Hornewer’s company could create by 75%. Every 3.5 miles he drives up here with a truck that consumes a gallon of diesel, his costs increase dramatically. He said the calculations for how the Rio Verde foothills can meet their water needs simply don’t add up when water use spikes during the hot summer months.
“We have two months, and we’re done,” he said. “In two months it doesn’t matter how much money you have.
Some of Hornewer’s customers require large supplies. Miller Ranch, which attracts visitors from all over the world to ride its collection of Foxtrotter horses in Missouri, has about 40 horses and about 20 horses a month to visit and maintain the people who live there on its 20-acre ranch. It uses 24,000 gallons.
“This is definitely a problem,” rancher Sharon Eagle said.
But if they want to keep animals of their own, they have few options.
“You can’t go buy bottled water for them,” she said.
Hornewer prints out on a dashboard showing how much water is left for each customer. An electronic monitor alerts him when their tank is depleted, allowing him to prioritize deliveries. On Saturday, Britney Kellum was at the top of his list.
As he filled her underground tank, Kellum came out to thank him.
Kellum is a renter and her job in logistics for a trucking company appreciates new obstacles to finding water. She also sympathizes with Rio Her Verde Her Foothills Social Her Media Honewer facing attacks on her site.
“It’s become very personal,” Kellum said.
“I think it’s a shame it’s gotten to this point,” she added. “This could be the difference between success and failure for us.”
