GVCCC: Build large pipeline

Green Valley Community Coordinating Council leaders asked Pima County Wednesday to help pay for a larger pipeline to bring outside water to the area.

The council’s executive board petitioned county supervisors to help build the pipeline to bring Central Arizona Project water to help water providers, and existing mine and agricultural water users.

The supervisors plan a “public review and comment” on Green Valley’s future water supply at Tuesday’s board meeting in Tucson. The board meets at 9 a.m. at the County Building on Congress Street near Church Avenue.

Community Water Co. has signed a letter of intent with Rosemont Copper’s parent company, Augusta Resource, to install a 20-inch pipeline from the nearest CAP connection at Pima Mine Road to Green Valley.

Critics worry that the agreement will make it easier for Rosemont to proceed developing an open-pit copper mine on the east side of the Santa Rita Mountains east of Green Valley - Sahuarita.

Arturo Gabaldon, Community Water’s president, has urged critics to separate in their minds the pipeline and the mine.

“It’s about water, it’s not about the mine,” Gabaldon has said.

At Wednesday’s GVCCC meeting, Gabaldon criticized Pima County for not doing more to bring CAP water to the area.

“Pima County has let us down,” he said.

The GV-Sahuarita area faces “a real challenge” in getting water, he said.

“We need to ask the county to step up to the plate,” and get more water here, he added.

Gabaldon said his company initiated talks with Rosemont - Augusta Resource to get the pipeline here.

In an Oct. 2 memorandum to the supervisors, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry was critical of the Community Water Co. agreement to obtain a 20-inch pipeline for CAP water.

He said it would take a 72-inch pipeline to meet the area’s needs.

Huckelberry said discussion of a 20-inch pipeline “is counterproductive,” and spending money on “such a solution would be a waste of resources.”

In remarks prepared for the GVCCC executive board meeting Wednesday, Community Water’s Gabaldon said there’s only enough water at the Pima Mine Road CAP terminus to “barely fill a 36-inch pipeline.”

He also cautioned that there may be pressure from the Sierra Vista area to receive a CAP allotment to provide water to the area and “retain its major military employer,” Fort Huachuca.

Recently, a new water-user group has been created locally, the Upper Santa Cruz/Providers-Users Group, USC/PUG.

In it are local water companies, golf courses, a housing development company and agriculture and mining companies.

It wants the county to increase efforts to bring CAP water to GV-Sahuarita.

This area faces competition for groundwater from several major users upstream from GV-Sahuarita including Rio Rico, Nogales, and Nogales, Sonora, an industrial and retail center of 250,000 to 300,000 residents.

Also on Wednesday the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors approved two more large housing developments near Tubac totaling more than 7,000 acres.

jlamb@gvnews.com | 520-547-9749