A power struggle over sewage

By Steve Emerine, Inside Tucson Business, 07.27.2007

The squabble between the governments of Marana and Pima County about who should own and benefit from Maranans’ sewage is an interesting example of local control versus regional planning.

Both sides claim they want what’s best for the people. Maybe.

Marana Town Manager Mike Reuwsaat and Mayor Ed Honea realize existing water, sewer and Central Arizona Project (CAP) agreements don’t necessarily benefit their town’s residents or the thousands of new people who’ll move there.

Some of the agreements were adopted before Marana became a town in 1977.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and members of the Board of Supervisors realize they’ll lose power to control future growth if they give up their claims to whatever goes down our toilets and drains.

Pima County doesn’t own the area’s water or a system for delivering it. Water in this region is provided by utilities including Tucson Water, the Metro Water District and others, unless you have a well and the right to pump from it.

Ideally both water and sewage would be handled by one big regional agency. We got close to that in the 1970s with the Metropolitan Utilities Management (MUM) agency, but Tucson and Pima County couldn’t agree on policies.

The two supergovernments killed MUM and in 1979 they signed an agreement for Tucson to take over water and the county to get what was left.

As a result, Tucson Water apparently will become the third big player in the Marana-Pima County water fight.

David Modeer, director of Tucson Water, weighed in on Marana water plans in 2004, when the Flowing Wells Irrigation District, which is partly inside Tucson’s city limits and partly in unincorporated Pima County, realized its CAP allocation provided more water than it could use.

David Crockett, superintendent of the Flowing Wells Irrigation District, asked the city if it would like to take his surplus CAP water and reimburse Flowing Wells for its cost.

Modeer declined, apparently because Tucson Water wasn’t using all of its own CAP allocation at the time. So Crockett asked others if they were interested. When Marana said yes, Modeer immediately urged his Tucson City Council to vote to condemn the entire Flowing Wells Irrigation District.

That prompted the tiny utility’s customers to rise up in anger at the city’s threat. Pima County joined them.

The Flowing Wells Irrigation District hired me as a consultant, but it was the intensity of its customers, Crockett’s leadership and the opposition to the condemnation from Huckelberry and Supervisor Sharon Bronson that made city officials decide to back off.

Now, however, Huckelberry, Bronson and other county officials are pitted against their former ally, Marana, on this sewage issue. A Huckelberry memo dated Oct. 11, 2001, may indicate why.

To justify his fledgling Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan giving the county the power to control future growth, he wrote: “It does Pima County no good to accommodate population in the rural and exurban areas where the lack of infrastructure keeps the tax base benefit of development very low, and the service demand that Pima County incurs costs more than the development will ever be able to return in revenue.”

He advocated a “concurrency” approach to use the county’s wastewater service areas as boundaries for future water supply and treatment, solid waste disposal, parks, roads, schools, libraries, correctional facilities and emergency and fire services for everyone.

In other words, Huckelberry wanted the county to use wastewater to control virtually all new development in cities, towns or unincorporated areas.

And with the money from sewer bonds, connection fees, monthly charges, property taxes and other revenues, Pima would have more power than Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Sahuarita or the county’s adopted child, South Tucson.

Unfortunately, that isn’t necessarily the best course if you truly believe in regional cooperation or local control.

Huckelberry and his bosses have a record of valuing their own power ahead of what’s best for anyone else. Their decision to bully Marana seems to be an example.

You may not live in Marana, but if it, the county and Tucson get into expensive lawsuits over Marana sewage, you and I will pay the legal bills. We also could lose some other things in the process.

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