Bill puts Arizona's water future
at risk
STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – Senator Lisa Otondo (D-4), a member of the Lower Basin Drought Contingency
Plan Steering Committee, released the following statement on Speaker Rusty
Bowers' HB2476
and the Gila River Indian Community's threat
to back out of the DCP because of it:
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Sen. Otondo |
"Speaker Bowers' HB2476 is perplexing in three ways: first, it
represents a deliberate attack against the Gila River Indian Community and
their water rights; second, Speaker Bowers agreed to the DCP plan and literally
stood behind the governor at its ratification, yet now he is deliberately attempting
to upend years of hard work that went into it, putting Arizona's water security
at risk; and third, it is clearly unconstitutional under the 1999 Arizona
Supreme Court decision on The San Carlos
Apache Tribe, The Tonto Apache Tribe, et al. vs. The Superior Court of Arizona,
et al. and would undoubtedly result in years of expensive litigation. In
that ruling, the Court stated, "The
consequences of failure to make use of appropriated water on all of the
appropriator's land must be determined on the basis of the law existing at the
time of the event, not on the basis of subsequently enacted legislation that
may change the order of priority."
"Speaker Bowers' audacious flip from supporting the DCP to
sabotaging it, and his further pursuit of this legislation risks invalidating
the DCP and putting Arizona's water future in the hands of the federal
government. That's not something we want and that's why members of the DCP
Steering Committee worked long and hard to arrive at a delicate compromise. I
urge Speaker Bowers to acknowledge that moving his bill forward jeopardizes our
water future, and to realize his actions actually hurt those he claims to be
helping."
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