Tucson Water Drought Preparedness and Response Plan
The Arizona Legislature passed a new law (HB2277) in 2005 that required all Arizona water providers to develop a drought preparedness and response plan by January 1, 2007. The plan was submitted to the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) in December of 2006. To assist water providers in plan development, ADWR published a guidance document outlining plan statutory requirements as well as guidelines for accomplishing those requirements. Statutory requirements include identification of drought response stages that provide for implementation of measures in response to a reduction in available water supply resulting from drought. In addition, by law, the plan must also include public notification and continuing education in relation to drought, development of emergency supplies, and specific water supply or water demand management measures for each drought response stage. The System Water Plan Guidance Document can be accessed through the "Eye on Drought" link on the ADWR website (http://www.azwater.gov/dwr/drought/); pages 11-14 provide specific guidelines for development of drought preparedness plans.
Tucson Water followed the guidance document to develop a Drought Preparedness and Response Plan to fit the unique characteristics of the Utility's water supplies, infrastructure, and customer-use patterns. For example, Tucson Water is the only water provider in southern Arizona currently delivering any Colorado River (or CAP) water to its customers. CAP water currently supplies nearly half of Tucson Water's annual customer demand. Having two potable water supplies (CAP and local groundwater) adds considerable reliability and flexibility in preparing for drought impacts. However, because CAP water is imported more than 300 miles from the Colorado River, the Drought Preparedness and Response Plan must consider both drought conditions on the Colorado River as well as local drought conditions.
Below you will find a link to the entire Drought Preparedness and Response Plan document, or to the individual chapters. To make this information more accessible to all of our customers, Tucson Water has produced a brief overview of the Drought Preparedness and Response Plan and a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about drought planning. This overview and the FAQs will provide you with the reasons we have developed the Drought Preparedness and Response Plan as well as a general look at the drought response stages including the triggers for declaration and the anticipated response measures for each stage.
To conserve bandwidth (and reduce your time spent waiting for a large file download), the major sections of this document are presented below as much smaller individual PDF files. If you would prefer, you may download the Drought Preparedness and Response Plan as a single large PDF file (74 pages; 3.4 Mb) by choosing the underlined link above.
- Cover (2 pages; 252 Kb)
- Executive Summary (6 pages; 55 Kb)
- Glossary (4 pages; 35 Kb)
- Chapter One: Introduction (4 pages; 730 Kb)
- Chapter Two: Water Resources and Production Capacity (10 pages; 1.0 Mb)
- Chapter Three: Drought Response Stage Declaration, Implementation, and Response Measures (21 pages; 495 Kb)
- Chapter Four: Emergency or Backup Supplies (3 pages; 82 Kb)
- Chapter Five: Plan Revisions (1 page; 18 Kb)
- Figures and Tables
- Drought Declaration Process Flow Chart (1 page; 189 Kb)
- Indicators and Triggers (2 pages; 28 Kb)
- Tables 3.1 - 3.4: Drought Response Measures (9 pages; 99 Kb)
- Table 3.1: Drought Response Measures; Stage 1 (2 pages; 38 Kb)
- Table 3.2: Drought Response Measures; Stage 2 (2 pages; 39 Kb)
- Table 3.3: Drought Response Measures; Stage 3 (3 pages; 46 Kb)
- Table 3.4: Drought Response Measures; Stage 4 (2 pages; 40 Kb)
- Appendices (15 pages; 934 Kb)
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