ADWR water report, accurate, say what...?

Perspective for your consideration …What does it look like when it’s fixed…?

Az water atlas gives picture of cities’ supply, demand…B. POOLE…Tucson Citizen …Phoenix, Prescott, Tucson, Santa Cruz, Pinal … excerpted …A new volume of the Arizona Water Atlas offers a sweeping view of the water picture in the state’s most populous areas. ...The latest draft volume of the nine-volume Arizona Department of Water Resources atlas covers the five active management areas, or AMAs - Phoenix, Pinal, Prescott, Tucson and Santa Cruz - the state’s designated water planning regions. … Previous volumes covered the state’s eastern and western plateaus and upper and lower Colorado and southeast and central highlands planning areas….”The primary objectives are to present an overview of water supply and demand conditions in Arizona, to provide water resource information for planning and resource development purposes and to identify the needs of our communities,” ADWR Director Herb Gunther said in a news release….The dense technical information is a bit lofty for most in the general public, said Ralph Marra, a resource planner for Tucson Water. …”But some people might want to wade in,” he said….The Active Management Areas volume provides a good perspective for southern Arizona, he said….Each volume contains details about the state’s water picture, including supply and demand, geography, population, ground and surface water, contamination sites and climate. The latest volume will be used in creating management plans for each of the five management areas. Those five areas house about 80 percent of Arizona’s population. …The last volume - the Arizona Water Sustainability Evaluation - will attempt to show whether Arizona has enough water. ADWR has not announced a release date for the last volume. …The department is taking comments from the public on all of the Arizona Water Atlas draft volumes through Oct. 31.
“IT” would be fixed for me, when terms like AMA (active management area) are for mainstream Arizona citizens, clear, concise and understandable, not the governmentese “gobble-de-gook” it is today. And when the information we need to honestly comprehend and evaluate the long term water issues in our state are not presented as dense technical information a bit lofty for most in the general public, again it need not be this way.

This information just like all information respecting all aspects of our water can be presented in clear, concise and understandable terms, but, it requires government being willing to think and act outside the box. Given that we have designed all agencies to spend the bulk of their time and energy merely defending and perpetuating the institution, we leave precious little time for the folks in those agencies to “think” about how any information will really be received by you and me. That is not their principal function.

ADWR, Director, Herb Gunter, if you really want Arizona citizens to understand the precarious situation of our water, then I honestly invite you to consider opening the door and hearing what we have to say…? Give us the seat at these tables where the discussions are taking place and honor our input with the same degree of courtesy you extend to developers, lobbyists, water purveyors, attorneys and contractors.

Why, Director Gunter, is there NO public hearing sponsored by your dept around the state to provide the education needed to permit folks to begin to actually ask relevant questions. Where, Director Gunter, might any Arizona citizen obtain a FREE copy of this government document and given the amount of data, I find your time frame for public comments grossly insufficient, though it quite assuredly meets the letter of the law allowing you to move forward in the manner which your dept has already determined. The process, Sir, is dishonoring, but you know that,

“IT” will be fixed for me, when we put into place a process in which the public has its rightful place at the head of the table and the information is clear, concise and understandably presented.