Meet your Town Council candidates
Whiskey Row sale a sign of vibrancy
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
10
NEWS............................... GPS, Higley adopt new budgets for coming school year.
SPORTS......................... 23
Gilbert girl, 15, on way to becoming a race car driver.
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FREE ($1 OUTSIDE OF GILBERT) | GilbertSunNews.com
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Tribal deal helps get Gilbert more water to grow BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY GSN Managing Editor
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fter nearly a decade of negotiations, Gilbert has agreed to pay the San Carlos Apache Tribe over $31 million in exchange for a 100-year water lease that will help secure enough water to meet state-mandated requirements for the town’s buildout. Gilbert will lease 5,925 acre feet of Central Arizona Project water from the tribe under the deal to help the town meet its 100-year assured water supply obligations required under the Arizona Groundwater Management Act. “Gilbert is always seeking out ways to achieve that through both conservation and acquisition,” Mayor Jenn Daniels said. “So we
developed a partnership and a relationship with the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and we have been able to see a mutually beneficial outcome.” Daniels said the deal benefits the town by offering water stability and benefits the tribe by providing financial and economic development resources. The allocation accounts for about 7 percent of Gilbert’s projected water supply at buildout, Town Manager Patrick Banger said. Unlike more mature communities, such as Phoenix and Mesa, which have larger water allotments, Gilbert relies on a patchwork of smaller allocations from a variety of sources to meet its water needs. The town’s portfolio includes allocations from Central Arizona Project, Salt River Proj-
ect, Roosevelt Water Conservation District, the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and the White Mountain Apache Tribe. “We’ve had to search a little bit longer and a little bit harder to put our portfolio together, but we are right on the cusp of completing that, thankfully, and the San Carlos Apache agreement was a key piece of that,” Banger said. The deal was eight years in the making. The town originally came to an agreement with the San Carlos Apache Tribe in 2010 to lease a portion of water allocation to the tribe in 1999 through its Water Rights Settlement Agreement. However, a complex web of jurisdictions and legal oversight issues prevented the deal from advancing until recently. Specifically, the see WATER page 9
Christian refugees find Piano prodigy helping hand in Gilbert BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY GSN Managing Editor
GETOUT ....................... 24 Firebirds chooses Gilbert for its fourth Valley restaurant.
COMMUNITY.................16 BUSINESS ......................18 OPINION ........................ 21 SPORTS ......................... 22 GETOUT ........................ 24 CLASSIFIED .................. 28
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t a time when the debate over U.S. refugee resettlement policy rages nationwide, Saba and Nazhoon exemplify what can happen when a community opens its arms to others in need. The couple built a new life for themselves in Gilbert after being driven from their home in Iraq by violence in the early 2000s. Forced to move from home to home in Iraq for years before fleeing to Egypt, they waited nearly a decade to be resettled in America. When they finally arrived in spring 2017, Saba and Nazhoon faced the tall task of adjusting to a new culture and society at the ages of 73 and 66, see REFUGEES page 6 respectively.
(Special to GSN)
Saadhvi Sri Jayaram of Gilbert is only 7, but she composed a piece she presented at the Yamaha 2018 National Junior Original Concert last month. Organizers select only 13 performers from some 6,000 Yamaha Music Education System students. She and a 15-year-old Gilbert boy participated. For their story, see page 16.