Opinion

Pima County, Marana fight for treatment plant

Our view: Both entities must work together to come up with fair solution

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.04.2007

Officials from Marana and Pima County say they're willing to sit down and talk about how to resolve a play by Marana to gain ownership and control of a sewage treatment plant just outside its town boundary.

Marana says it wants to straighten this problem out by talking and negotiating with the county. The county says that sounds fine, but its terms aren't changing.

So here, from the hallowed halls of the Bureaucracy Playhouse Theater, is a pre-enactment of how this as yet unscheduled meeting between Marana and Pima County officials might play out. Feel free to use sock puppets dressed in suits and bola ties to play the parts.

LIGHTS UP:
MARANA: We want the Marana wastewater treatment plant.
PIMA COUNTY: You can't have it.
M: We want it. We need the effluent from it for growth that's already planned in the town.
PC: Too bad. You can't have it.
M: But we want it.
PC: You can have the same deal as everyone else: your share of the effluent with some taken off the top to settle conservation allotments and a water rights agreement with Indian tribes.
M: No. We want it all. The sewage that goes into that plant comes from Marana toilets and sinks. We should get the effluent it produces.
PC: You can have what everyone else has, nothing more.
M: But you said we could have it. In the 1979 agreement that makes Pima County handle the town's wastewater, it says we can have it.
PC: No, it doesn't. It says you can have pipes, not the treatment plant.
M: The Marana plant is temporary. We need one in a better location.
PC: That's ridiculous — Pima County taxpayers just spent more than $16 million to expand and improve the sewer plant. That's not temporary.
M: Fine. We're taking our sewage and going somewhere else — like Pinal County. We'll build a new treatment plant there.
PC: Good luck with that. We'll be placing a call to the Central Arizona Association of Governments, which has to approve your plan, and let them know what we think, since you could be using water generated in Pima in your fancy new plant.
M: But we want it.
PC: No.
M: But . . .
PC: No.
LIGHTS DOWN

We don't think there's going to be a curtain call after this performance. But there may be a lawsuit.

The town is desperate to get control of the treated effluent water produced by the sewer plant, because Marana needs it to prove it has enough water to support growth.

Marana Mayor Ed Honea says the town has all the drinkable water it needs right now — but it has to come up with enough renewable-resource water to meet state requirements for replacing water it takes out of the ground. And the town figures it's better to get the effluent than spend a lot of money on buying CAP water, which will likely be more expensive.

The power play Marana is attempting isn't working out well for the town so far, partly because Marana's arguments contain holes the size of manhole covers. The other reason is that Pima County and Tucson appear to hold most of the cards.

The plant in question is outside Marana town boundaries, and Pima County has moved to designate it as a park to block annexation. Even then it's unclear that Marana could gain ownership of a public utility simply by annexing it.

The 1979 intergovernmental agreement, which Marana says gives the plant to the town, is not clear on that point. The agreement appears to grant to Pima County parts of the sewer system that the county uses to ferry sewage from Point A outside the town, through Marana to Point B outside the town. And it seems to give Marana ownership of parts of the system within the town — but the sewer plant in question is outside of town boundaries. Resolution will most likely be found in court. The plant is also part of a bond package, and picking off one significant asset used to secure county bonds isn't a prudent, or possibly even legal, plan. The residents of Pima County — which includes Marana — have a financial interest in the treatment plant.

The plant is part of the larger regional wastewater system overseen by Pima County. Honea and Marana Town Manager Mike Reuwsaat say that it can't be a true regional system if one entity is at the helm, namely the county. It's a fair point, but it ignores the fact that the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the elected officials who oversee the system, are elected countywide.

And, as County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry points out, Marana isn't trying to get out of the county library system, the Superior Court system, the county jail or the county flood control district. Counties exist to deal with umbrella issues that affect everyone.

So unless Marana tries to secede into Pinal County — which we are not, for the record, advocating — working with Pima County to strike a fair, practical agreement that keeps the best interests of everyone in mind is the only way to move forward and call it curtains on Marana's efforts to control the sewage plant.

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