Z sustainability
River Run Network Working to Restore Tucson’s Historic Waterways by Craig Baker
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22 ZOCALOMAGAZINE.com | January 2018
WHEN THE FIRST locomotive charged, smokestack bellowing, into town in 1880, Tucson lurched into a new industrial age. “Ask a school boy what laid the foundation for the grander[sic] of the Roman Empire and he will answer: The construction of roads,” proclaimed pioneer Charles D. Poston’s op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star on March 9 of that year. And, at this moment, Poston asserted, “The ancient pueblo of Tucson is roused from the lethargy of ages, and is embraced in the network of the civilized world.” The population ballooned to more than 7000 that year—nearly double what it had been just a decade before—and though it stagnated somewhat for the next two decades, come the turn of the 20th Century, the trajectory of growth skyrocketed. By 1910 Tucson was home to more than 13,000 people, and it topped 20,000 by 1920. During this time, rivers like the Rillito and Santa Cruz saw perennial (meaning year-round) flow, if only intermittently and people were apparently still fishing from the Santa Cruz River near downtown Tucson the same year the Southern Pacific Railroad rolled into town. But a growing population meant a growing need for resources and, in order to meet demand, 1890 also saw the start of groundwater pumping by Tucson Water, as well as the beginnings of the local sewer and water pipeline systems. The technology needed to dig deeper wells and pump greater quantities of water improved, and, so, Tucsonans pumped more water. And, again, Tucson grew, and, again, we pumped still more water. Largely as a result of the overpumping of groundwater and a dearth of water being recharged into the underground aquifers, during a period that stretched primarily between the 1940s and the 1960s, Tucson’s water table ultimately began to drop and its local perennial streams, creeks, and rivers started drying up. Today, as most Tucsonans know, what remains of our once-flowing rivers are largely dry wash beds that only see water during heavy storms, or when they are recharged directly with wastewater. According to Catlow Shipek, Policy and Technical Director for the local non-profit Watershed Management Group (WMG), in 1908 at the confluence of the Santa Cruz and Rillito Rivers, even when there was no water flowing above ground, the water level could be found just five feet below the surface of the earth—or ten to fifteen feet during the dry season—which was enough to support riparian vegetation like cottonwoods and willows. Today, the water level in that same area hovers at a depth somewhere between 100 and 150 feet underground in most places. As it stands, groundwater and surface water, though interrelated in terms of the abundance and accessibility of either, are treated as separate entities which are managed by independent agencies—the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Tucson Water, and other municipalities, for instance, are