Rincon Group / Our Blogs / Blog on Water . . .

[another superb "background info" article -- comprehensive and detailed ] -- from "Jeffrey D. Burgess"... 

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"Arizona Water Protection Fund Hijacked By Agricultural Interests"  (see below, for an excerpt)

The Arizona Water Protection Fund (AWPF) was created in 1994 by the Arizona Legislature to protect and enhance the state’s streams and associated riparian habitat. But during the last several years it’s been hijacked for the benefit of ranchers and irrigated agriculture.

The environmental purpose of the AWPF was always tenuous, because it wasn’t created as a result of some newfound concern in the Legislature about protecting important natural ecosystems. It was created as a political strategy to make Arizona’s 1993 proposal to repay the multibillion-dollar debt it owed the federal government for the construction of the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal system more attractive to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR).

 . . .

The redesigned Commission has approved grants for the following projects which have had little, if anything, to do with the remaining legal requirement that AWPF projects “directly benefit” riparian areas:..

Rincon Group / Our Blogs / Blog on Water . . .