In your story about the predicament facing the San
Pedro River, Mark Anderson, whom the Bush administration has chosen
as chief of the U.S. Geological Survey office responsible for San
Pedro River studies, states that “pumping in the Sierra Vista area
… is probably not yet imperiling the river” (HCN, 8/30/04: A
Thirst for Growth). This is absurd.
Studies by the Arizona
Department of Water Resources, the Commission on Environmental
Cooperation, and USGS demonstrate that the river’s base flow,
or river flow during the driest times of the year, has already
decreased dramatically. These declines have been great enough to
cause loss of wetland plants. A clear trend of declining water
levels in the region’s monitoring wells has been documented
by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Before the Bush
administration put pressure on federal scientists, the USGS and the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that groundwater pumping
had resulted in the decreasing or intermittently absent base flow
in the Palominas/Hereford area and in the Huachuca City area. The
administration has also suppressed Corps of Engineers data that
reveals groundwater-pumping from Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca is
now negatively affecting the flow gradient near the San
Pedro.
The strategy of the Upper San Pedro Partnership and
Bush administration officials has been modeled after efforts by
Nogales and Tucson-area developers and farmers, who successfully
promoted endless studies of the Santa Cruz River while blocking all
significant efforts to control the groundwater pumping and
diversions that ultimately killed it.
The San Pedro is the
Southwest’s last surviving desert river. It deserves
better.
Robin Silver
Phoenix,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Once again, science gets soaked.
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