House Bill Offered on Home Sales, Water Supply Disclosure
House Bill 2025 would require developers who subdivide property outside of an Active Management Area (AMA) to record the subdivision’s determination of water adequacy or inadequacy issued by the Arizona Department of Water Resources. A document recorded with the respective county recorder.
ADWR’s Water Adequacy Program already requires the developer of a proposed subdivision to submit plans for the water supply for the subdivision and demonstrate the adequacy of the water supply to meet the needs projected by the developer. After evaluation, ADWR makes a water adequacy or inadequacy determination.
Under the Water Adequacy Program, developers are required to disclose any inadequacy of the water supply to potential buyers and may sell lots with an inadequate water supply determination. However, in the past there has been no requirement that documentation of the determination should be recorded with the county.
Two Bills before State Legislature on Water Harvesting
S.B. 1236 would provide for the recharge of harvested rainwater, by directing the Arizona Department of Water Resources to develop rules governing collection, storage and recovery practices. These rules would include a method for calculating the amount of water harvested. Provisions of the bill limit the annual recovery of such recharge to 50 percent of the base amount of water that is harvested. The bill defines “harvested water” as rainfall that is captured before reaching a natural channel, drainage way or navigable waterway.
H.B. 2363 concerns the recharge of “Macro-Harvested Water”, which relates to large scale projects rather than projects of individual home owners or commercial establishments. The bill would establish a 28-member Joint Legislative Study Committee on Macro-Harvested Water to analyze and evaluate issues arising from the collection and recovery of large scale harvested water. Macro-harvesting of water involves capturing and storing water that runs off of all impermeable surfaces at scales from subdivisions to watersheds.
National Climate Assessment Comes to Tucson
On January 18 and 19, 2012, the University of Arizona was host to a Convening Lead Authors (CLAs) meeting with the National Climate Assessment (NCA). Approximately 60 CLAs from 30 NCA chapters met to work through examples of how to use the methodologies, framing, and evaluation tools that have been developed in order to ensure a consistent approach across writing teams and a strong focus on the quality and transparency of the information used to draw conclusions. CLAs discussed potential key messages, explored the “riskbased framing” concept, and started outlining their chapters for the 2013 synthesis report. This meeting also included a “world café” that featured issues like how to most effectively integrate themes across regions/ sectors and identifying remaining issues that need to be addressed in the Assessment process. In addition to the CLAs meeting, the Executive Secretariat met twice to address strategic and management issues.
All of the technical input documents that have been in preparation over the last year will be due on March 1 and the CLAs will work with each chapter’s authors to put together 8-page synthesis documents that are due on June 1. Over the summer, a synthesis document will be refined and edited, aiming for a public review of the full draft towards the end of 2012. CLAs from the University of Arizona include Gregg Garfin, Deputy Director for Science Translation & Outreach, Institute of the Environment (Chapter 20: Southwest Region) and Diana Liverman, Co-Director, Institute of the Environment (Chapter 27: Agenda for Climate Change Science).
The NCA is being conducted under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act (GRCA) of 1990. The GCRA requires a report to the President and the Congress every four years that integrates, evaluates, and interprets the effects and current trends of global change, both human-induced and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years. National climate assessments act as status reports about climate change science and impacts. They are based on observations made across the country and compare these observations to predictions from climate system models. The NCA aims to incorporate advances in the understanding of climate science into larger social, ecological, and policy systems, and with this provide integrated analyses of impacts and vulnerability.
More information about current research and previous NCA reports can be found at http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment.