Rick Schultz doesn’t hate grass outright. He can see the use for it in some places—kids should be able to play soccer somewhere, sure—but there’s no need for it in road medians or sweeping lawns in arid places, says Schultz, a water conservation specialist at the municipally owned utility in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Located on the southern fringes of the Denver metro area, Castle Rock is one of the fastest growing communities in the country. Its population has skyrocketed from 20,224 in 2000 to nearly 72,000 today. Seventy percent of Castle Rock’s water supply comes from non-renewable groundwater, so as the town grew, officials had to figure out how to stretch that supply. In 2006, the water utility and the planning department started collaborating to address that issue. 

The community created a water master plan that set guidelines—like where it made sense to have grass—to delineate how and where they could conserve water while still accommodating growth. Schultz says they had to think outside of traditional land use regulations and water supply patterns to work toward long-term sustainability, steering disparate parts of the planning process toward smart growth: “We needed to push the boundaries a little if we wanted a better outcome.”

Since then, Castle Rock has introduced financial incentives, regulatory changes, and even behavioral science strategies to ensure that water supply is actively considered as part of every planning and development process. From offering incentives to developers who install water monitoring systems to requiring landscapers to pursue professional certification in water efficiency, Castle Rock has become a leader in this area, recognized by the state of Colorado for its efforts and for sharing best practices with other organizations. 

In communities across the United States, water managers and planners are emerging from the silos they’ve traditionally operated in to find new ways to work together. This is in part because climate change is causing turbulence for the water sector nationwide, in the form of prolonged droughts, damaging floods and wildfires, severe storms, and sea-level rise. The urgency of developing resilience in the face of these threats is becoming increasingly clear. Collaboration is also increasing because, although communities face many different challenges and operate with countless variations on municipal structures, many are rediscovering a singular truth about land and water: when you plan for one, you have to plan for both. 

“Water engineers are beginning to recognize they cannot provide sustainable services without involving those in the development community—including planners, architects, and community activists,” explains the American Planning Association’s Policy Guide on Water (APA 2016). “Leading edge planners are reaching across the aisle to water managers to help advise on their comprehensive plans, not only to meet environmental objectives, but also to add value and livability, rooted in the vision of the community.” 

How We Got Here

Picture the view from an airplane as you fly over rural areas or the outskirts of any major city: the way the right-angled boundaries of agricultural fields and housing plots contrast with the twisting braids of river channels and the irregular shape of lakes and ponds. Land and water are very different resources. They have been managed differently—and separately—as a result.

The divide between water and land planning has deep roots. Although water is connected to all parts of sustainable growth, from ecosystem health to economic viability, planners and water managers have long worked separately. From volunteer planning boards in rural communities to fully staffed departments in major cities, planners focus on land use and the built environment. Water managers, meanwhile, whether they are part of a municipally owned utility, private water company, or regional wholesaler, focus on providing a clean and adequate water supply. 

“I can’t think of a single city where [planning and water management] are contained within a single division,” says Ray Quay, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability who has served as both assistant director of land planning and assistant director of water services in Phoenix, Arizona. Quay says regional and watershed-wide development choices about growth often don’t line up with water supply.

“A typical divide would be that planners plan for growth while assuming the water utility will be able to supply water, while water utilities don’t participate in decisions about community growth, they just build infrastructure to serve the new growth that comes to them,” adds Jim Holway, director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, which was created by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2017 to advance the integration of land and water management.

Ivana Kajtezovic, planning program manager at Tampa Bay Water, a regional wholesale drinking water utility in Florida, confirms that lack of alignment. “Tampa Bay Water doesn’t have a say in growth in the counties and cities we serve,” says Kajtezovic. “Our only mission is to provide drinking water, no matter the growth or the speed of growth. Land use decisions are made by the counties and cities we serve.”

In a 2016 APA Water Working Group Water Survey, 75 percent of land use planners felt they were not involved enough in water planning and decisions (Stoker et al, 2018). “We know that land and water are connected, and no one ever argues that they’re separate,” says Philip Stoker, assistant professor of Planning at the University of Arizona, who conducted the APA survey. “It’s only people who have separated them.” 

This divide is partly a result of historical regulatory structures. “Water is very much state law-based, with some federal hooks into various aspects of it,” says Anne Castle, former assistant secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Federal management involves regulations such as the Clean Water Act and agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and water rights are allocated at the state level. Meanwhile, although there is federal and state oversight of some public lands, most of the regulation and planning related to private land happens locally or regionally, reflecting individual and community rights and desires. While there are state-level initiatives to “put more emphasis on the consideration of water in developing land,” Castle says—including in Colorado, where she is based—there are still wide gaps in priorities and responsibilities.

Communities across the country are dealing with unique issues, of course, but Stoker’s survey suggests the barriers to solving them are similar: lack of time, lack of resources, fear of a loss of jurisdictional power if they surrender some control, and differences in education, experience, and technical language. It can be hard to surmount those issues. “Logically it should be easy, but when institutions grow up with a single focus, it’s hard to change their mission and expand into other places,” says Bill Cesanek, cochair of the APA Water & Planning Network. Cesanek says things work better when planners share the responsibility for determining where the water to meet future demands will come from.

Land and water planners have to work together, agrees Quay, and need to be realistic about where, how, and whether their communities can grow. “One of the really critical factors is political will,” he says. “We should be thinking about what’s most important for our community, and we should be allocating our water to that.” 

According to Holway of the Babbitt Center, that’s becoming more common. “With growing demand for water in the face of increasing challenges to acquiring new water supplies, utilities and land planners are having to figure out how to work together to maintain a balance between supply and demand.”  

“Too Much, Too Little, Too Dirty”

According to the APA Policy Guide on Water, water-related threats often fall along familiar lines: not enough water, thanks to increased population growth and climatic stress on top of already fully allocated or overallocated water supplies; too much water, due to flooding and rising sea levels; or compromised water quality due to agricultural and urban runoff and other sources of contamination. In every case, the urgency is growing.

Not enough water. In the Southwest—especially the overtapped Colorado River Basin, which serves 41 million people in seven U.S. and two Mexican states—persistent drought means diminishing snowpack, dwindling supplies in natural aquifers, and shrinking reservoirs. Researchers predict that Colorado River flows will decline by 20 to 35 percent by 2050 and 30 to 55 percent by the end of the century (Udall, 2017). 

The drought also has cascading impacts on water systems. For instance, increasingly frequent and large wildfires in dry Western forests are causing watershed contamination in areas that haven’t previously dealt with it, like the headwaters of the Colorado. During fires and for years afterward, according to the EPA, water can be polluted by ash, sediment, and other contaminants, which forces water managers to scramble for solutions. “I do think there’s a much greater trend of land use planning and water management collaboration occurring fastest in places that are facing scarcity,” Stoker says.

Too much water. Over the last 30 years, floods in the United States have caused an average of $8 billion in damages and 82 deaths per year (Cesanek 2017). As climate change fuels more extreme weather events, Quay says, floods are exceeding parameters defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that have traditionally guided planning decisions. Quay says it’s hard to adapt because our stationary planning guidelines and laws aren’t set up for those extremes. 

Places like low-lying Hoboken, New Jersey—where rising sea levels and superstorms like Hurricane Sandy have inundated sections of the city—are building water system resilience into their planning. The city is incorporating features like manmade urban sand dunes that work as physical barriers and can divert storm surges to newly built flood pumps. “The stormwater system is at the same level as the river—[stormwater] has nowhere to go, so they’ve had to build a really innovative resilience planning program,” Cesanek says.

Contaminated water. During heavy rains, which are increasingly frequent due to climate change, the combined sewer system in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, overflows into neighboring rivers and Lake Michigan, polluting the waterways, compromising the ecosystem, and affecting the water supply. “Stormwater gets into our combined and sanitary systems. Nothing is water-tight,” says Karen Sands, director of Planning, Research, and Sustainability at Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD). Sands says MMSD has had to align at-odds geographic and jurisdictional layers to find solutions that protect the watershed. One of those solutions is the construction of 70-acre Menomonee stormwater park, built in conjunction with city planners, which is expected to treat 100 percent of runoff from industrial and commercial areas nearby. It both ensures a clean supply of water now, and preemptively manages demand for the future. 

Chi Ho Sham, president of the American Water Works Association, a nonprofit international organization for water supply professionals, says one of the group’s biggest concerns is water quality, particularly protecting water at the source, limiting pollutant use, and creating barriers to slow or prevent contamination. “From my point of view, our job is to work very collaboratively with landowners,” he says. “Water managers cannot do it alone.”

Infrastructure and Equity Issues

The U.S. population is projected to reach 517 million by 2050, and the fastest-growing cities are in the South and West (U.S. Census Bureau 2019). You can’t keep people from moving to Tempe or Tampa Bay, but this population growth is occurring in regions where the pressure on both water quality and quantity is already high. In some places, this rapid growth has forced the hand of planners and water managers, who have implemented water conservation and reuse measures to ensure there will be enough water to go around.

To complicate matters, our nation’s water infrastructure hasn’t kept up with changing demographics. Old lead pipes are disintegrating, and water treatment plants are overwhelmed by the amount of water they need to process. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s drinking water a D grade, estimating a cost of $100 billion for all the necessary infrastructure upgrades (ACES, 2017).

There is also a divide between places that can afford to upgrade their infrastructure and those that cannot. Addressing that inequity is crucial to securing future water supplies for everyone, says Katy Lackey, senior program manager at the nonprofit US Water Alliance, a national coalition of water utilities, businesses, environmental organizations, labor unions, and others which is working to secure a sustainable water future. 

“We believe water equity occurs when all communities have access to clean, safe, and affordable drinking water and wastewater services, infrastructure investments are maximized and benefit all communities, and communities are resilient in the face of a changing climate,” she says. Reaching that goal will require new ways of working.

How to Work Together Well

Integrated planning starts with getting people in the same room to understand the needs of their community, the gaps in current processes, and how they can better work together, says Holway of the Babbitt Center. From there, formalizing goals around planning and water is critical, whether those goals are reflected in a comprehensive or master plan for community development, in a more specific plan based on conservation and resilience, or in zoning and regulatory changes. 

“We are focused on identifying, evaluating, and promoting tools to better integrate land and water, with input from a diverse group of practitioners and researchers,” Holway says, noting that Babbitt Center Research Fellow Erin Rugland has produced several publications for practitioners, including a matrix of available tools for integrating land and water (Rugland 2021) and two manuals focused on best practices (Rugland 2020, Castle and Rugland 2019).

Those focused on the importance of integrating land and water say there are several factors that contribute to successful collaborations, including:

Build relationships. Stoker found that getting people out of their silos is an important first step. “In the places that have been the most successful at integrating land and water planning, the utilities and planners were friends. They knew that if they worked together, they would benefit,” he says. Stoker cites Aiken, South Carolina, where water managers helped build the comprehensive plan, as an example, adding that this kind of collaboration is important at every scale. In Westminster, Colorado, water managers participate in preapplication meetings for any new development. From the beginning, they have a chance to advise on how choices made about things like plumbing and landscaping will impact a project’s water use and fees.

Westminster is one of 33 western communities that have participated in the Growing Water Smart program, a multiday workshop run by the Babbitt Center and the Sonoran Institute with additional funding from the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Gates Family Foundation. Growing Water Smart brings small teams of leaders together to communicate, collaborate, and identify a one-year action plan. 

“The heart of Growing Water Smart is getting land use planners and water managers from the same communities together to talk to each other, sometimes for the very first time,” says Faith Sternlieb of the Babbitt Center, who helps to facilitate the program. “Once they start sharing resources, data, and information, they see how valuable and important collaboration and cooperation are. It isn’t that they didn’t want to work together, it’s that they truly thought they had everything they needed to do their jobs. But they don’t often have the time and space they need to think and plan holistically.”   

“What has worked in my experience is to form relationships with the planners making decisions,” confirms Kajtezovic of Tampa Bay Water. “To the extent possible, I communicate with them and explain the importance of source water protection.”

Be creative and flexible. Once relationships are formed, creativity and flexibility are key. Because every community is facing different planning challenges, “context is incredibly important,” says Quay. This is true not just among different regions, but within regions, and sometimes even from one community to the next. “What works in Phoenix won’t necessarily work in Tempe [a city of nearly 200,000 just east of Phoenix], so we can’t just adapt best management practices, we have to think about best for who.” He recommends identifying a broad, flexible set of tools that can be used and adapted over time.

Be willing to learn. Because of specialization, planners and water managers “don’t speak the same language,” says Sham, who says the AWWA has been working on collaborative education about source water protection for members and landowners. Sometimes it feels like added work on the front end, and he says people can be reluctant to take on work that’s not in their purview, but developing a shared language and understanding is crucial for long-term sustainability. 

John Berggren helps communities coordinate land and water planning as a water policy analyst for Western Resource Advocates. He says one of his first steps is to educate local leaders and get them excited about including water in their comprehensive plans. “We get them interested and concerned about conservation, to create top-down support for planning departments and water utilities,” he says. Once water is codified in a comprehensive plan, he says, that allows planners and utilities to come up with creative, progressive solutions. 

Be comprehensive. The integration of land use and water planning works best when it is included in state-level regulations or in comprehensive plans at the community level. According to the Babbitt Center, 14 states formally incorporate water into planning in some form, and that number is growing. For example, the 2015 Colorado Water Plan set a goal that 75 percent of Coloradans will live in communities that have incorporated water-saving actions into land use planning by 2025; communities across the state are working on that process, and 80 communities would have to take action to hit the 2025 deadline. Colorado also recently passed state legislation that outlines water conservation guidelines for planning and designates a new position in the state government to support the coordination of land and water planning. 

Since 2000, when Arizona passed the Growing Smarter Plus Act, the state has required communities to include a chapter in their comprehensive plans that addresses the link between water supply, demand, and growth projections. It’s happening in less dry places, too. The Manatee County, Florida, comprehensive plan matches water quality with need to make the best use of non-potable water. It includes codes for water reuse and alternative water sources to increase availability, and to make sure that water gets to the most appropriate destination.

To incorporate water into comprehensive plans, Quay says, communities need a concrete idea of the type and amount of their available resources. Water managers and planners can then work together to identify new and alternative water sources like treated wastewater and graywater (household water that has been used for things like laundry and can still be used for flushing toilets); to identify projected demand; and to outline how to meet it.

Embrace the power of local action. Even if water-related planning is not mandated by the state or incorporated in a community’s comprehensive plan, water managers and planners can still find ways to collaborate. More specific local plans can include water supply and wastewater infrastructure plans; hazard mitigation and resilience plans, like floodplain and stormwater management; demand management; watershed processes and health; and plans for interagency coordination and collaboration. If those variables feel overwhelming, Berggren suggests that planners look to their peer communities for best practices. Although each community is different, he says, “no one needs to reinvent the wheel.” 

Local policy shifts can also include form-based codes that outline water-related aspects of the built environment. In Milwaukee, Sands says best practices for managing flooding and pollution include “updating municipal codes and ordinances to encourage green infrastructure and more sustainable practices.” That green infrastructure, which mimics natural processes at the site level through things like bioswales and stormwater storage, can make communities more resilient to climate change, while restoring ecosystems and protecting water supply.  

Water-wise policy shifts can also come in the form of zoning ordinances, like smaller lot sizes. Planners can use subdivision and land development regulations to promote on-site capture, infiltration, and slow release of stormwater. Some communities have adopted plumbing codes that require high efficiency fixtures, or building codes that permit water recycling, or submetering to increase efficiency in multifamily residences. Fountain, Colorado, has conservation-oriented tap fees, which incentivize developers to meet water efficiency standards beyond the building code. Developers can pay lower tap fees if they agree to options like native landscaping or including efficient indoor fixtures across a development.

The benefits of integrating land and water planning are myriad, from measurable results like adapting plans for development to ensure an adequate water supply to more indirect, long-term effects like reducing conflict between water users as supplies shrink. Back in Castle Rock, Schultz and his colleagues have observed that water-focused land use ordinances can have a big impact, and can benefit quality of life as a whole. It hasn’t always been easy, Schultz says, but the new way of doing things seems to be paying off: “We’ve shown that we can do better if we provide a good foundation.” 

Heather Hansman is a freelance journalist, Outside magazine’s environmental columnist, and the author of the recent book Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West.

Lead Photograph: In Castle Rock, Colorado, planners and water utility managers have partnered on plans for sustainable growth. Credit: Robert Young via iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus.

References

APA (American Planning Association). 2016. APA Policy Guide on Water. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association. https://www.planning.org/policy/guides/adopted/water/.

ACES (American Society of Civil Engineers). 2017. Infrastructure Report Card. Washington, DC: American Society of Civil Engineers. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/.

Castle, Anne, and Erin Rugland. 2019. “Best Practices for Implementing Water Conservation and Demand Management Through Land Use Planning Efforts: Addendum to 2012 Guidance Document.” Denver, CO: Colorado Water Conservation Board. January. https://dnrweblink.state.co.us/cwcbsearch/ElectronicFile.aspx?docid=208193&dbid=0.

Cesanek, William, Vicki Elmer, and Jennifer Graeff. 2017. Planners and Water: PAS Report 588. Chicago, IL: American Planning Association. https://www.planning.org/publications/report/9131532/.

Rugland, Erin. 2021. “Integrating Land and Water: Tools, Practices, Processes, and Evaluation Criteria.” Working paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/integrating-land-water. (February).

Rugland, Erin. 2020. Incorporating Water into Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Land Use Planners in the Colorado River Basin. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/other/incorporating-water-comprehensive-planning.

Stoker, Philip Anthony, Gary Pivo, Alexandra Stoicof, Jacob Kavkewitz, Neil Grigg, and Carol Howe. 2018. Joining-Up Urban Water Management with Urban Planning and Design. Alexandria, VA: The Water Resource Foundation. https://www.waterrf.org/research/projects/joining-urban-water-management-urban-planning-and-design.

Udall, Bradley, and Overpeck, Jonathan. 2017. “The Twenty‐First Century Colorado River Hot Drought and Implications for the Future.” Water Resources Research 53 (3): 1763-2576.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2019. “Fastest-Growing Cities Primarily in the South and West.” Press release. May 23. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/subcounty-population-estimates.html.

Related

Growing Water Smart: Workshop Helps Western Communities Integrate Water and Land Use Planning

Water Planning: Land Use Decisions Could Make or Break the River that Sustains One in Nine Americans

In the fall of 2018, water managers in Arizona were in heated discussions about how to limit the damage from a decades-long megadrought on the Colorado River. The drought has forced painful reckonings and realignments related to water use throughout the Colorado River Basin. Because of the way the water has been allocated over time, it had become clear that Arizona would bear the brunt of the looming shortages—and that farmers in the state, many of whom have low-priority water rights, would face severe cuts.

At a meeting that October, Stefanie Smallhouse, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, denounced the proposed cuts. She suggested that the proposals showed disrespect for farmers, in particular for a white settler named Jack Swilling who, in her telling, had heroically made the desert bloom. “I find it’s ironic that we are exactly 150 years from the first farmer starting the settlement [of] the Phoenix area,” Smallhouse said. “There wasn’t anybody else here. There [were] relics of past tribal farming, but [Swilling] was pretty much the starter.”

Later in the meeting, Stephen Roe Lewis spoke. Lewis is the governor of the Gila River Indian Community, a reservation south of Phoenix that is home to members of the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh tribes. The Akimel O’otham trace their heritage to the Huhugam civilization, which constructed a massive system of irrigation canals to support the cultivation of cotton, corn, and other crops in the area beginning about 1,400 years ago. But in the 1870s and 1880s, new canal systems built primarily by white farmers drained the Gila River, devastating the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh farms and leading to famine and starvation. “History is important,” Governor Lewis stated, correcting Smallhouse’s account of Swilling finding only “relics” of tribal farming. “We’ve been farming for over 1,000 years, and the only time that was disrupted was when that water was taken away from us.”

The Gila River Indian Community has, in fact, spent much of the past 150 years trying to win back water its members had long depended on. In 2004, a congressionally approved settlement awarded the community a substantial quantity of water from the Colorado. Since then, the community has actively worked to protect those rights. “We will be here as long as it takes to find solutions,” Lewis told the assembled stakeholders in 2018. “But we will fight to the end to make sure that our water is not taken again.”

As that exchange illustrates, the long history of Native Americans in the Colorado River Basin is often ignored in discussions about the management of the resource, as are their social, cultural, and environmental attachments to the river. The comments from Lewis indicate how committed today’s tribal leaders are to changing that. Since the late 1970s, tribes in the region have won a series of settlements confirming their rights to Colorado River water. Today, tribes control an estimated 20 percent of the water in the river. As the entire basin faces the reality of serious shortages, it has become clear that tribes—which have sovereignty under the U.S. Constitution, giving them the right to govern themselves—must be key players in any conversation about the future.

The stakes are considerable, not just for tribes but for everyone who depends on the Colorado. Some 41 million people in seven American and two Mexican states use water from the river, which irrigates more than four million acres of farmland. If the Colorado watershed were a separate country, it would be among the 10 largest economies in the world. But drought and other effects of climate change are pushing the river beyond its ability to meet the enormous demands on it, bringing tribes more squarely into the river’s politics.

To improve the ability of tribes to manage their water, and to give them a stronger voice in management discussions and decisions in the basin, several organizations launched the Water & Tribes Initiative (WTI) in 2017, with funding from the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, a program of the Lincoln Institute. Leaders of the project, which is now also funded by the Walton Family Foundation, Catena Foundation, and several other partners, include a cross-section of tribal representatives, current and former state and federal officials, researchers, conservation groups, and others.

“If we work together, we can find solutions to these issues,” says Daryl Vigil, a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and co-facilitator of WTI. He says this is a delicate time for the tribes: “If we’re not ahead of this game, in terms of just a basic recognition of tribal sovereignty in this process, there are huge risks.”

“We are excited to be part of this evolving and growing partnership,” says Jim Holway, director of the Babbitt Center. “The work WTI is doing is critical to the long-term sustainability of the basin and is central to our goal of improving the links between land and water management.”

Divided Waters

The 29 federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin have long lived within a paradox. In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tribes have a right to water for their reservations. In the first come, first served hierarchy of western water law, the Court dealt them a powerful trump card, ruling that a tribe’s water rights were based on the date its reservation was created. Since most reservations were established by the U.S. government in the second half of the 1800s, tribes are theoretically in a stronger position than any of the other users on the river. Like the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh, all of the tribes were here long before non-native settlers.

But when representatives from the seven basin states gathered in 1922 to draw up the Colorado River Compact, they pushed tribes into the background. The compact specifies the division of water among California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico and laid the foundation of a complex web of agreements, laws, and court rulings collectively known as the “Law of the River”—which essentially ignored Indians. (See the special issue of Land Lines, January 2019, for an in-depth exploration of the river and its history.) Although the compact briefly acknowledges “the obligations of the United States to American Indian tribes,” it does not go into detail about tribal water rights. As the scholar Daniel McCool has noted, “the omission of any consideration of Indian rights left unresolved one of the most important problems in the basin” (McCool 2003).

The author and historian Philip Fradkin put a finer point on it, declaring that “the Colorado is essentially a white man’s river.” But Anglo settlers had ignored Indians at their peril, he noted: the unresolved issue of Indians’ true rights to water from the Colorado was a “sword of Damocles” hanging over the river’s future (Fradkin 1996).

The full extent of Indian water rights is still not quantified. In the early 1970s, federal policy took a radically new course, adopting the principle of tribal self-determination. That led to tribes negotiating directly with the federal government to settle their water rights. In 1978, Arizona’s Ak-Chin Indian Community was the first to do so; since then, 36 water-rights settlements have been negotiated between tribes, other water-rights holders in the basin, and state and federal agencies. “The onset of negotiated settlements was an important part of the evolution” of tribal water rights, says Jason Robison, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. “But the features they’ve come to incorporate have also broken new ground.”

While tribal water rights were originally seen primarily as a necessity for farming on reservations, the settlements of the 20th century allowed some tribes to lease their water rights to users outside their reservations. This came to be seen as an economic development tool and a way to fund basic services for tribal members.

For the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, tying water to economic development is “all about creating a permanent homeland, where people go off, get educated, and come home,” says Bidtah Becker, a tribal member and attorney who has long been involved in water issues as a Navajo Nation government official. “We’re trying to develop a thriving homeland that people come home to, that works.”

In many cases, tribes don’t have the physical infrastructure to put their allocated water to use. Throughout the United States, Native American households are 19 times more likely than white households to lack indoor plumbing. On the Navajo Nation, the widespread lack of water services has likely contributed to the tribe’s horrendous losses to COVID-19; at one point in 2020, the nation had a higher per capita infection rate than any U.S. state (Dyer 2020). “Between 70,000 and 80,000 Navajos still haul water [to their homes] on a daily basis,” Vigil says. “In our country, in 2020, there’s still 70,000 to 80,000 people who aren’t connected to water infrastructure in a pandemic. It’s crazy.”

Vigil is the Water Administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation in New Mexico. In a 1992 settlement with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), the tribe was allotted 40,000 acre-feet (roughly 13 billion gallons) of water per year, which it leased to the operator of a coal-fired power plant. The lease helped fund annual payments to tribal members for many years. But as the economy shifted toward green energy, the leases were not renewed. “So all of a sudden we’re left with settlement water stored [in a reservoir] 40 to 45 miles away, with no ability to use that water,” Vigil says.

Given the current drought, he says, the tribe could easily lease its water to others, but the terms of its federal settlement prohibit leasing water outside of New Mexico. Instead, the water flows out of the tribe’s hands and into the hands of other users. “No mechanisms are available to take our water outside of state boundaries,” Vigil says. “For the last two years, we’ve had over 30,000 acre-feet of unleased water going down the river.”

The ability to lease water can give tribes leverage—and an economic boost. In a hard-fought 2004 settlement, the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) secured rights to more than twice as much water as the city of Las Vegas. It has used those rights to become a major, though often overlooked, force in Arizona water policies and politics. The tribe participated in negotiations around the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), a multiyear, basinwide agreement signed in 2019 to address the impacts of the decades-long drought (Jenkins 2019).

States negotiated their own agreements as part of the DCP process; in Arizona, GRIC agreed to leave some of its water in Lake Mead, the reservoir that provides water to the Lower Basin, and to lease another portion to the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District to address concerns about long-term water supplies for new development. Together, the two deals could be worth as much as $200 million to the tribe.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT)—a community that includes the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo tribes on a reservation spanning the river in Arizona and California—was also an important participant in the DCP. The community’s participation was not without internal controversy: some tribal members were opposed to the DCP and attempted to recall the members of their tribal council. Ultimately CRIT agreed to leave up to 8 percent of its annual allocation in Lake Mead for three years in exchange for compensation of $30 million from the state of Arizona and an additional $8 million pledge from a group of foundations and corporations organized by the Walton Family Foundation and Water Funder Initiative.

The DCP negotiations were complex and contentious. In the end, coming to a resolution required getting tribes, cities, farmers, and other major stakeholders to the table.

The Relationship Between Tribal and State Allocations

When a tribe wins the right to use or lease a certain amount of Colorado River water, that water is considered part of the allocation of the state where the tribe is based. Because the states have individual allocations of water under the laws and agreements governing the river, newly negotiated tribal water settlements reduce the amount of water available for other users in that state. In the past, when tribal water allocations were not used, this water was left in the system for use by others. This issue is particularly acute in Arizona, where 22 of the 29 basin tribes have reservations. With the water rights of many tribes still unrecognized and unquantified, tribes and other stakeholders are understandably on edge about the future availability of water in the drought-stricken basin and intent on finding ways to work together to ensure a sustainable future.

To access policy briefs, reports, and other materials produced by the Water & Tribes Initiative, visit www.naturalresourcespolicy.org/projects/watertribes-colorado-river-basin.

Bridging the Gap

Since its inception, WTI has aimed to improve the tribes’ abilities to advance their interests and to promote sustainable water management in the basin through collaborative problem-solving. “We walk a tightrope,” says Matt McKinney, who co-facilitates the initiative with Vigil. McKinney is a longtime mediator who directs the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana. “On the one hand, it’s pretty easy to see us being advocates for tribes, which we are. But the larger frame is that we’re advocates for a fair, equitable, effective process of solving problems and making decisions.”

“The success of tribal water settlements has been based on the relationships of the people in the room,” says Margaret Vick, an attorney for the Colorado River Indian Tribes. “And the Water & Tribes Initiative has expanded the [number of] people in the room.” WTI is now working to shift away from narrow negotiations on individual water settlements to a much broader conversation spanning the basin: the current guidelines for managing the river will expire at the end of 2026, and new guidelines for the next several decades will soon be hammered out. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR)—the division of DOI that manages the Colorado and other western waterways—is reviewing the past decade and a half of negotiations and operations to prepare for the next round. “We need a more inclusive renegotiation process,” says Morgan Snyder, senior program officer at the Walton Family Foundation’s environment program. “This is the opportunity to influence the next 25 years of water management in the basin.”

Anticipating the renegotiation process, McKinney and Vigil conducted interviews in 2019 with more than 100 people, including tribal leaders, water managers, and others involved in water issues in the region, to identify major issues facing the basin as well as ways to enhance collaborative problem-solving, particularly tribal participation in decisions about the river. WTI held workshops with tribal members and other interested parties from across the basin to identify strategies to enhance tribal and stakeholder engagement.

“Many interviewees believe it is time to move beyond managing the river as a plumbing and engineering system that supplies water to cities and farms and toward a more holistic, integrated system that better accommodates multiple needs and interests, including but not limited to tribal sacred and cultural values, ecological and recreational values, and the integration of land and water management decisions,” McKinney and Vigil wrote. “The intent here is to articulate a holistic, integrated vision and then make progress toward that vision incrementally over some period of time . . . and to move from a system focused on water use to watershed management” (WTI 2020).

To raise awareness, increase understanding, and catalyze conversations, WTI is issuing a series of policy briefs on topics ranging from the enduring role of tribes in the basin to a systemwide vision for sustainability. It is also helping the Ten Tribes Partnership, a coalition created in 1992 to increase the influence of tribes in Colorado River water management, develop a strategic plan.

But changing the nature of water management negotiations—to say nothing of the nature of water management itself—will not be easy. “Just like any other really complicated process, you have to figure out a way to break it down,” says Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas and its suburbs. “You have to eat the elephant that is Colorado River law and all of the interrelated problems one bite at a time. This presents issues if different stakeholder groups have differing opinions on the scope of negotiations.”

Some tribes have been frustrated by the difficulty of making their voices heard, even though they are sovereign nations. “We’re not ‘stakeholders,’” Vigil says. “We always get thrown into the same pool as NGOs, conservation groups. But it’s like, ‘No, we’re sovereigns.’”

The federal and state governments have also made some significant missteps. In 2009, the USBR launched a major study to assess current and future supply and demand along the river (USBR 2012), yet tribes weren’t meaningfully included in that process. Only after pressure from several tribes did the bureau commission a study of tribal water allotments, conducted with the Ten Tribes Partnership and released years later (USBR 2018). That study outlines the barriers to the full development of tribal water rights and analyzes the potential impacts of tribes developing those rights—especially for other users who have come to rely on the water that long went unused by the tribes. And in 2013, the basin states and the federal government began discussions about the Drought Contingency Plan without notifying tribes.

“States have ignored tribal water rights and tribal water use since the compact in the 1920s,” Vick says. “The [supply and demand study] was a state-driven process, and the states did not understand tribal water rights and were rarely involved in even considering what goes on on the reservation, as far as water use. They can’t [do this] anymore, because there has to be a full understanding to be able to manage the 20-year drought that we’re in.”

One basic but critical remaining challenge is finding a common way to understand and discuss issues related to the river. Anne Castle, a former assistant secretary for water and science at the DOI who held responsibility for the USBR from 2009 to 2014, is now a member of WTI’s leadership team. “The challenge is that we’re not talking about just having additional people—tribal representatives—at the table,” she says. “Those tribal representatives bring different values to the table as well. We haven’t really dealt with those cultural and spiritual and ecological values in these sorts of discussions previously.”

Bridging that gap is a slow process, Castle adds. “When you have spoken one language for as many years as state water managers have . . . to be exposed to a different way of talking about water is difficult,” she says. “But the converse is also true: it takes [tribal representatives] a long time of sitting in meetings and listening to understand how what state water managers are talking about will impact them.”

What Comes Next

The coming renegotiations “are a very important inflection point in how the basin states and the federal government treat tribal sovereignty in the Colorado River Basin going forward,” says Robison of the University of Wyoming. “When that process gets mapped out, you’ll be able to see, okay, to what extent are the tribes again being pushed to the margins? To what extent are the basin-state principals and the feds willing to actually not kick the can down the road?”

In a hopeful sign of potential collaboration, several large water agencies are contributing funding to the Water & Tribes Initiative, including the Southern Nevada Water Authority, Denver Water, the Imperial (CA) Irrigation District, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the Central Arizona Project. The Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups have provided support for WTI convenings as well.

Exactly how tribes might get a more substantial voice in decisions about the river’s future isn’t clear. One proposal that emerged from WTI’s basinwide interviews in 2019 is for the creation of a sovereign review team that would include state, federal, and tribal representatives, perhaps supplemented by an advisory council of representatives from each of the basin’s 29 tribes.

No matter how the negotiations are structured, much is at stake for all involved. While there seems to be a general commitment to consensus and collaboration, there is a fundamental tension at the heart of the endeavor. As McKinney notes, “One of the tribes’ fundamental interests is to develop and use their water rights. That interest seems to be diametrically opposed to the current interests of the basin states and the objectives of the DCP, which are all about using less water.” Historically, unused tribal water has been used by nontribal entities, in some cases allowing those entities to exceed their allocations. Now, in an era of long-term drought and climate change, there’s less and less water to go around. “You can see,” says McKinney, “that the basin is faced with some difficult conversations and tough choices.”

For most tribes, the choice is clear. “We need to develop our water rights,” says Crystal Tulley-Cordova, principal hydrologist for the Navajo Nation’s Department of Water Resources. “We shouldn’t be expected to forfeit our development.”

One of the most contentious issues centers on the ability of tribes to lease their water to users outside the boundaries of their reservations. Allowing tribes to lease their water—or not—is one of the principal sources of leverage that individual states have over the tribes within their boundaries. “Given that tribal water rights are counted as part of the allocation for the state in which the reservation is located, tribes need to work with state officials and other water users to find mutual gain solutions that balance everyone’s needs and interests,” says McKinney.

Vigil agrees and emphasizes that a tribe’s right to do what it wants with its water, whether using it for farming or economic development on tribal lands or leasing it to other users, is a key tenet of the self-determination principle codified in federal policy since the 1970s. “The heart of it goes to those foundational concepts of an ability to determine your own future,” Vigil says. “And that’s what sovereignty is to me.”

Finding Common Ground

WTI is already helping tribes work toward the kind of solidarity that will make it difficult for any entity to ignore their collective voice. Recently, 17 tribal leaders joined together to send a letter to the DOI about the next stage of negotiations. “When Tribes are included in major discussions and actions concerning the Colorado River, we can contribute—as we already have—to the creative solutions needed in an era of increasing water scarcity,” the letter read. “We believe frequent communication, preferably face-to-face, is appropriate and constructive.”

“The ‘Law of the River’ is always evolving,” says Holway of the Babbitt Center. “I am optimistic that we will better incorporate the perspectives and interests of the broader community in future Colorado River management discussions; in the face of increasing water scarcity, a broader base of engagement will be essential. I am also hopeful we will be seeing a stronger tribal voice within the U.S. Department of the Interior.” (At press time, President-elect Joe Biden had nominated Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico to serve as secretary of the Interior; Haaland would be the first Native American to head the agency and the first Native American Cabinet secretary.)

The guiding principle for WTI, McKinney says, is “to build on the collaborative culture in the basin and to focus on common ground, to build a sense of momentum by working on the 80 percent of the issues where tribal and other water leaders can agree—and then circle back around to address the differences.”

That focus on common ground is helping to create stronger ties not just among tribes, but also between tribes and the established water management community. “One of the great things about the Water & Tribes Initiative is that it’s trying to create this network of people who can all rely on each other,” says Colby Pellegrino. “It’s building a web for people to walk across instead of a tightrope.”

Matt Jenkins is a freelance writer who has contributed to the New York Times, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, and numerous other publications.

Photograph: A member of the Cocopah Tribe surveys the tribe’s former fishing grounds along the Colorado River. Climate change and severe drought are leading to critical water shortages throughout the Colorado River Basin. Credit: Pete McBride.

References

Dyer, Jan. 2020. “Practicing Infection Prevention in Isolated Populations: How the Navajo Nation Took on COVID-19.” August 17. Infection Control Today 24(8). https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/how-the-navajo-nation-took-on-covid-19.

Fradkin, Philip. 1996. A River No More: The Colorado River and the West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Jenkins, Matt. 2019. “Beyond Drought: The Search for Solutions as Climate Impacts a Legendary River.”
Land Lines. January. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/beyond-drought.

McCool, Daniel. 2003. Native Waters: Contemporary Indian Water Settlements and the Second Treaty Era. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

USBR (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation). 2012. Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy/finalreport/index.html.

———. 2018. Colorado River Basin Ten Tribes Partnership Tribal Water Study Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy/tws/finalreport.html.

WTI (Water & Tribes Initiative). 2020. “Toward a Sense of the Basin.” Missoula, MT: University of Montana Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. https://naturalresourcespolicy.org/docs/colorado-river-basin/basin-report-2020.pdf.

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En la década de 1980, poco después de que China se hubiera abierto al mercado y el comercio internacionales, las tierras agrícolas del país empezaron a sucumbir a la súbita urbanización. Entre 1987 y 1995, el crecimiento explosivo de las ciudades consumió entre tres y cinco millones de hectáreas de tierras agrícolas excelentes. Este patrón provocó cambios drásticos en el paisaje y grandes preocupaciones sobre la seguridad alimentaria. El gobierno central, consciente de que la ausencia de granjas implicaría una ausencia de alimentos para la creciente población (que, por otro lado, hacía apenas unas décadas había sufrido una hambruna arrasadora que se había cobrado la vida de 20 a 50 millones de personas, entre 1958 y 1961), promulgó regulaciones que exigían a quienes destinaran tierras agrícolas a otros usos que garantizaran la protección de la misma cantidad de tierras agrícolas en otra parte.

El Ministerio de Suelo y Recursos de China hizo un esfuerzo heroico por cumplir estos mandatos de cero pérdida neta. Pero era imposible controlar la calidad del suelo y las decisiones locales sobre intercambio de tierras, en particular con sistemas de gestión antiguos, como datos limitados, registros en papel y mapas con baja resolución. Entre 2001 y 2013, la urbanización avanzó rápido y se tragó unas 33 millones de hectáreas de tierras agrícolas. En la mayoría de los casos, las tierras agrícolas ricas que rodeaban a las crecientes ciudades se “reemplazaron” por bosques menos productivos y pastizales. Para incrementar el rendimiento de un suelo menos fértil, los productores rurales debieron adoptar prácticas de cultivo más intensivas y recurrieron a fertilizantes químicos, pesticidas y sistemas de irrigación. Estas soluciones técnicas conservaron la seguridad alimentaria, pero a un costo elevado: entre otras cosas, agotaron los acuíferos y contaminaron el suelo.

Hoy, China es un país importador neto de granos, y el futuro de la producción depende de que se encuentren nuevas fuentes hídricas para irrigar. La seguridad alimentaria vuelve a ser un tema de preocupación cada vez mayor, pero algo más está cambiando en China: el organismo de suelo y recursos (que hoy se llama Ministerio de Recursos Naturales) está modernizando el sistema que usa para controlar y hacer cumplir la política de conservación de tierras agrícolas. Este incorpora la adopción de datos geoespaciales provenientes de imágenes satelitales y otras detecciones remotas para mapear y evaluar la calidad del suelo recuperado. También incluye controles en las fronteras urbanas para guiar mejor las decisiones de desarrollo.

Las mejoras recientes en la calidad de las imágenes satelitales y los métodos de análisis informático están permitiendo controlar las labores de preservación de tierras agrícolas en China con una precisión cada vez mayor. Estas mejoras también son muy prometedoras para la conservación territorial e hídrica en todo el mundo. En estos meses, el Instituto Lincoln dará un paso importantísimo para expandir la accesibilidad y el uso de esta tecnología de vanguardia: lanzará el Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales (CGS, por sus siglas en inglés).

El CGS es un nuevo núcleo de datos, pericia y servicios para personas y organizaciones de los sectores público, privado y sin fines de lucro que trabajan para conservar los recursos hídricos y territoriales. Ampliará el acceso a sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), detección remota y otras herramientas que pueden ayudar a tomar decisiones sobre gestión territorial e hídrica. Si bien estas herramientas existen desde hace décadas, muchas organizaciones no cuentan con los datos, el equipo, el personal o la pericia para implementarlas, lo cual limita su capacidad de alcanzar los objetivos y colaborar con otras partes a gran escala. El centro se dedicará a habilitar el acceso a tecnología de vanguardia para personas y comunidades que, históricamente, vivieron oprimidas o marginadas; gobiernos de países, regiones o estados con ingresos bajos a medios; organizaciones sin fines de lucro con recursos limitados; y nuevos emprendimientos o empresas que operen en economías limitadas o en vías de desarrollo. 

Lanzamos esta iniciativa porque sabemos que las reformas de gran alcance como las que implementó China para conservar las tierras agrícolas son solo el primer paso hacia un resultado esperado. Para alcanzarlo, dichas políticas deben preceder al trabajo menos glamoroso de persistir en controlar y hacer cumplir las normas, además de ajustarlas en función de las lecciones aprendidas. Por otra parte, si los gestores desean supervisar las políticas de suelo a nivel nacional o internacional, deben acceder a los mejores datos y herramientas de precisión que puedan, para hacer un seguimiento de lo que está ocurriendo a nivel local y responder a ello. El CGS estará a cargo de empleados con amplia experiencia en tecnologías de mapeo, desarrollo organizacional, salud pública y conservación, y ofrecerá datos, realizará análisis y creará herramientas personalizadas para responder a la creciente demanda de organizaciones de todos los tamaños, con todos los niveles de capacidad técnica.

El CGS se erige sobre la amplia trayectoria del Instituto Lincoln de ideas pioneras que han transformado las políticas de suelo a nivel nacional y global. El Instituto Lincoln tiene un papel protagónico en el desarrollo de la tasación computarizada de bienes raíces desde la década de 1970. Esto revolucionó el modo en que los gobiernos locales de todo el mundo administraban el impuesto a la propiedad inmobiliaria, el componente más importante de la renta pública local en casi todas partes. A principios de los 80, el Instituto Lincoln acordó unos 40 fideicomisos de suelo para movilizar iniciativas para la conservación de suelos privados en los Estados Unidos y complementar la de tierras públicas. Desde que expandió el alcance y el uso de las servidumbres de conservación, y logró propugnar las deducciones tributarias estatales y federales para conservar tierras privadas, la coalición, que se convirtió en Land Trust Alliance, ayudó a proteger más de 22 millones de hectáreas de suelos privados, lo cual equivale a la superficie de Minnesota. Además, en 2014 lanzamos la Red Internacional de Conservación del Suelo (ILCN, por sus siglas en inglés), que conecta a organizaciones civiles y privadas de conservación territorial con personas de todo el mundo, y dio origen a iniciativas de conservación importantísimas en varios continentes.

Con el lanzamiento del CGS, nos preparamos para poner en práctica nuestra pericia en la labor de apoyar y amplificar las audaces iniciativas territoriales que existen en la actualidad. Por ejemplo, a principio de año, Campaign for Nature lanzó un trabajo mediante el que, para el año 2030, pretende proteger un 30 por ciento del suelo y los océanos del planeta. La “Campaña 30 para el 30” tiene como meta analizar el cambio climático, apoyar la creciente población mundial y evitar las extinciones masivas mediante la protección de recursos naturales y ecosistemas esenciales, y el control y la administración de dicha protección a perpetuidad. Esta iniciativa colosal puede aprender de las labores de protección de tierras agrícolas en China y otros esfuerzos audaces por gestionar el suelo y los recursos a niveles nacionales o globales, y se beneficiará con las herramientas y los análisis como los que propone el CGS.

Una primera pregunta que resulta importante es si podemos aprovechar los traumas de 2020 (una pandemia, incendios forestales devastadores en Australia y los Estados Unidos, la creciente frecuencia y gravedad de calamidades relacionadas con el clima) para forjar la voluntad política de realizar acciones globales significativas. ¿Podemos convencer a la clase política y los votantes del mundo de que la crisis climática o las extinciones masivas son una amenaza para la supervivencia de los humanos y exigen el tipo de acción global coordinada que provocó la pandemia? Además: ¿podemos ajustar el objetivo global de 30 para el 30 a fin de provocar acciones más específicas (y prácticas) a niveles más bajos de la geografía y evitar consecuencias inesperadas?  Si bien 30 para el 30 es una consigna práctica, el 30 por ciento del suelo y los océanos que la campaña elija proteger guardará una relación directa con la capacidad que tengamos de revertir la crisis climática o evitar extinciones masivas. Tendremos que determinar qué suelos y otros recursos debemos proteger, cuáles proteger primero, y cómo hacerlo. Tendremos que supervisar a los agentes locales para procurar que sus acciones sean coherentes con los objetivos y las estrategias globales. Y tendremos que encontrar formas de responsabilizar a los actores clave para que cumplan las referencias esenciales. Por último, cuando hayamos identificado los ecosistemas específicos que queremos proteger, necesitaremos mecanismos legales para hacerlo y medios para controlar la protección y la administración a perpetuidad. Se necesitarán miles de personas equipadas con las herramientas y la capacitación para controlar y hacer cumplir los convenios legales, y con la autoridad para hacerlo.

El Instituto Lincoln puede aportar a esta audaz labor global al ayudar a la Campaña a determinar qué suelos y otros recursos debe proteger primero, cómo controlar y administrar esa protección y, con la colaboración de la ILCN, cómo transitar los mecanismos legales relevantes en los distintos países con distintos sistemas normativos. En labores paralelas, el Instituto Lincoln está construyendo un plan de estudios a distancia para capacitar a funcionarios gubernamentales y profesionales locales en el uso más efectivo de nuevas herramientas y enfoques de gestión territorial e hídrica. El CGS puede ofrecer herramientas y capacitación que se puedan implementar a nivel local para respaldar objetivos globales, a fin de descentralizar la toma de decisiones. Al poner a disposición general la tecnología de mapeo, podemos darles a las personas y organizaciones la posibilidad de colaborar y lograr un impacto en la conservación territorial e hídrica que es mayor en varios órdenes de magnitud que lo que pueden lograr en soledad.

El Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales existe para aportar nueva claridad y entendimiento al tema de la conservación territorial global, ya que aumenta el acceso a datos con la intención de construir un futuro más sostenible. Como una niebla que se dispersa, al aplicar tecnología geoespacial, todas las personas podrán ver qué está pasando en cualquier parte del planeta. Nos hará sentir que la Tierra es mucho más pequeña, y que las soluciones a los problemas más complicados de la humanidad son mucho más fáciles de alcanzar.

Imagen: El Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales (CGS) ampliará el acceso a sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), detección remota y otras herramientas que pueden ayudar a tomar decisiones sobre gestión territorial e hídrica. Este mapa del CGS combina datos sociales y medioambientales para destacar entornos de los cuales dependen especies en riesgo, o que están bajo presión por el desarrollo y adyacentes a áreas protegidas existentes (en verde). Crédito: CGS.

Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the United States and the fastest-growing city in the country. For Mayor Kate Gallego—the second elected female mayor in Phoenix history and, at 39, the youngest big-city mayor in the United States—navigating that growth means prioritizing economic diversity, investments in infrastructure, and sustainability.

Gallego was elected in March 2019 to complete the term of a mayor who was heading to Congress, then reelected in November 2020. As a member of the Phoenix City Council, she led the campaign to pass a citywide transportation plan for Phoenix through 2050, which represented the country’s largest local government commitment to transportation infrastructure when it passed in 2015.

Before entering politics, Gallego worked on economic development for the Salt River Project, a not-for-profit water and energy utility that serves more than 2 million people in central Arizona. Just days after her reelection, Mayor Gallego spoke with Senior Fellow Anthony Flint. The interview kicks off a series of conversations with mayors of cities that are especially significant to the Lincoln Institute, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2021. An edited transcript follows; listen to the full interview on the Land Matters podcast.

Anthony Flint: Congratulations on your reelection. What issues do you think motivated voters most in these tumultuous times?

Kate Gallego: Voters were looking for candidates who would deliver on real data-driven leadership and science-based decision-making. I come to this job with a background in economic development and an undergraduate environmental degree. My chemistry professor told us that the more chemistry you take, the less likely you [are] to move up in electoral politics. But I think 2020 may have been a different year where science matters to voters . . . Arizona voters wanted leadership that would take COVID-19 seriously, as well as challenges such as climate change and economic recovery.

For younger voters in particular, climate change was a very important issue. I ran for office as my community faced our hottest summer on record. In some communities, climate change may be a future issue, but in Phoenix, it was an issue facing us right now. Different generations describe it differently. So my dad tells me, if you can just do something about the heat in the summer here, you’ll definitely be reelected. A different lens, but I think the same outcome.

AF: How has the pandemic affected your urban planning efforts? Did it surface any unexpected opportunities?

KG: The pandemic really changed how people interact with their communities. We saw biking and walking more than double . . . what people tell us is they didn’t realize how much they enjoyed that form of moving about our communities, and they intend to keep some of those behavior changes . . . . We’re currently looking at how we can create more public spaces. Can we expand outdoor dining and let people interact more with each other?

Dr. Anthony Fauci has told us that the more time we can be spending outdoors, the better for fighting COVID-19. But that also has other great benefits. I serve as mayor of the city with the most acres of parks of any United States city, and this has been a record year for us enjoying those Phoenix parks . . . You can be in the middle of Phoenix on a hiking trail and some days you don’t see anyone else. So those amenities and the focus of our planning around parks has really improved this year.

We also continue to invest in our transportation system. We’ve decided to speed up investment in transit, which was a decision that we did have real debate over, that I think will allow us to move towards a more urban form. We’ve actually seen increased demand for urban living in Phoenix. We have more cranes in our downtown than ever before and we are regularly seeing applications for taller buildings than we have seen before. I understand there’s a real national dialogue about whether everyone will want to be in a suburban setting, but the market is going in a different direction in our downtown right now.

COVID-19 has also made us look at some of the key challenges facing our community such as affordable housing, the digital divide, and addressing food security, and we’ve made significant investments in those areas as well.

AF: Many might think of Phoenix as a place with abundant space for single-family homes, where a house with a small yard and driveway is relatively affordable. Yet the city has a big problem with homelessness. How did that happen?

KG: Phoenix competes for labor with cities such as San Francisco and San Diego and others, that still have a much more expensive cost of housing than we do. But affordable housing has been a real challenge for our community. Phoenix has been the fastest-growing city in the country. Although we have seen a pretty significant wage growth, it has not kept up with the huge increases in mortgages and rent that our community has faced. It’s good that people are so excited about our city and want to be part of it, but it’s been very difficult for our housing market.

The council just passed a plan on affordable housing including a goal to create or preserve 50,000 units in the next decade. We are looking at a variety of policy tools, and multifamily housing will have to be a big part of the solution if we are going to get the number of units that we need. So again, that may be moving us towards a more urban form of development.

AF: Opponents of the recent light rail expansion argued it would cost too much, but there also seemed to be some cultural backlash against urbanizing in that way. What was going on there?

KG: Our voters have voted time and time again to support our light rail system. The most recent time was a ballot proposition [to ban light rail] in 2019 shortly after I was elected. It failed in every single one of the council districts; it failed in the most Democratic precinct and the most Republican precinct in the city. Voters sent a strong message that they do want that more urban form of development and the opportunity that comes with the light rail system. We’ve seen significant investments in healthcare assets and affordable housing along the light rail. We’ve also seen school districts that can put more money in classrooms and in teacher salaries because they don’t have to pay for busing a significant number of students. We have really been pleased with its impact on our city when we have businesses coming to our community. They often ask for locations along light rail because they know it’s an amenity that their employees appreciate. So I consider it a success, but I know we’re going to keep talking about how and where we want to grow in Phoenix.

AF: We can’t talk about Phoenix and Arizona without talking about water. Where is the conversation currently in terms of innovation, technology, and conservation in the management of that resource?

KG: Speaking of our ambitious voters, they passed a plan for the City of Phoenix setting a goal that we be the most sustainable desert city. Water conservation has been a Phoenix value and will continue to be. The city already reuses nearly all wastewater on crops, wetlands, and energy production. We’ve done strong programs in banking water, repurposing water, and efficiency and conservation practices, many of which have become models for other communities.

We are planning ahead. We have many portions of our city that are dependent on the Colorado River, and that river system faces drought and may have even larger challenges in the future. So we’re trying to plan ahead and invest in infrastructure to address that, but also look at our forest ecosystem and other solutions to make sure that we can continue to deliver water and keep climate change front of mind. We’ve also had good luck with using green and sustainable bonds, which the city recently issued. It was time to invest in our infrastructure . . . partnerships with The Nature Conservancy and others have helped us look at how we manage water in a way that takes advantage of the natural ecosystem, whether stormwater filtration, or how we design our pavement solutions. So we’ve had some neat innovation. We have many companies in this community that are at the forefront of water use, as you would expect from a desert city, and I hope Phoenix will be a leader in helping other communities address water challenges.

AF: Finally, if you’ll indulge us: we will be celebrating our 75th anniversary soon; our founder established the Lincoln Foundation in 1946 in Phoenix, where he was also active in local philanthropy. Would you comment on the ways the stories of Phoenix and the Lincolns and this organization are intertwined?

KG: Absolutely. The Lincoln family has made a huge impact on Phoenix and our economy. One of our fastest-growing areas in terms of job growth has been our healthcare sector, and the HonorHealth network owes its heritage to John C. Lincoln. The John C. Lincoln Medical Center has been investing and helping us get through so many challenges, from COVID-19 to all the challenges facing a quickly growing city.

I want to recognize one Lincoln family member in particular: Joan Lincoln, who was one of the first women to lead an Arizona city as mayor [of Paradise Valley, 1984–1986; Joan was the wife of longtime Lincoln Institute Chair David C. Lincoln and mother of current Chair Katie Lincoln]. When I made my decision to run for mayor, none of the 15 largest cities in the country had a female mayor; many significant cities such as New York and Los Angeles still have not had one. But in Arizona, I’m nothing unusual. I’m not the first [woman to serve as] Phoenix mayor and I’m one of many [female] mayors throughout the valley. That wasn’t true when Joan paved the way. She really was an amazing pioneer and she’s made it more possible for candidates like myself to not be anything unusual. I’m grateful for her leadership.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Photograph: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has pursued an ambitious sustainability agenda for the city. She was reelected in November 2020. Credit: Mayor Kate Gallego via Twitter.

Related

Land Matters Podcast: Reflections on a Changing Desert Southwest from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego

The city of Phoenix, America’s fifth-largest metropolis, is going through some major changes—in demographics, voting patterns, and the physical landscape that has long defined the region.

In this episode of the Land Matters podcast, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, reelected to a second term in November, reflects on a supercharged political season, the battle against COVID, and how, among other changes, Phoenix is becoming a more sustainable, and more urban, place. Historically known for sprawling suburban development, the city is taking steps to conserve water, moving forward on extensions of its light rail network, and increasing its commitment to providing affordable housing.

Phoenix has long been a fast-growing region, but the pace has picked up recently, Gallego says, as new residents flock there – some simply seeking relief from more expensive cities, others untethered from offices by the pandemic and taking advantage of the flexibility that working remotely provides. “We’ve seen many people voting with their feet and coming to our community,” she says.

Given that influx, maintaining affordability is one of the key drivers of a move towards “a more urban form,” she says. Under her leadership, the city is shifting toward more multifamily housing and greater height and density downtown, all served by the growing light rail network. Residents are increasingly asking for these features, she says—and the added benefit is that kind of growth is more sustainable.

The interview with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is available online and will be available in print, as the latest installment of the Mayor’s Desk feature—interviews with chief executives of cities from around the world.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Photograph: Courtesy of Anthony Flint.

Further reading:

Making Sense of Place: Phoenix

Water in the West: Finding and Funding Stormwater Capture Solutions

StoryMap: The Hardest-Working River in the West

Mayor’s Desk: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego on Sustainability and Urban Form

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy today launched a new enterprise to expand the use of advanced technology for land and water conservation—The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS). The center will give people and organizations the tools they need to manage land and water resources with precision, at the scale required to confront pressing challenges such as climate change, loss of habitat, and water scarcity.

The center will provide data, conduct analysis, and perform specialized consulting services that enable organizations of all sizes in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to deploy geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other geospatial technologies. The center will help practitioners to overcome barriers such as a lack of staffing, resources, or expertise, which have hindered the adoption of geospatial technology, especially in the nonprofit sector.

“If land and water managers, conservationists, and governments are to meet rapidly accelerating social, economic, and environmental challenges, including climate change, they need to work together at larger scales and make use of every possible tool,” said Anne Scott, executive director for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will enhance collective access to better data and analysis, so that practitioners and decisionmakers can act collaboratively on the best information available.”

The center will deliver services directly to nonprofit organizations, foundations, governments, and businesses, and will also work with funders to guide and administer grants. The center will also use the resources and expertise of the Lincoln Institute, which is organized around the achievement of six goals: sustainably managed land and water resources, low-carbon, climate-resilient communities and regions, efficient and equitable tax systems, reduced poverty and spatial inequality, fiscally healthy communities and regions, and functional land markets and reduced informality.

“My wife, Laura, and I developed Esri to help people make better decisions for our world, and that is what the Center for Geospatial Solutions is accomplishing,” said Jack Dangermond, President and CEO of Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri). “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will move the global environmental field over the next decade to meet goals set forth by scientists to save and restore our planet. The center’s combination of partnerships, shared resources, advanced data science and analysis fills an important niche to bring geospatial technology solutions to environmental organizations worldwide.”

The center will prioritize access to technology for people and communities that have been historically marginalized, governments in the developing world, under-resourced nonprofit organizations, startups, and businesses operating in developing or restricted economies. The center will build customized tools that can be tailored to fit the size and capacity of any organization.

“These are unprecedented times, which require broad vision combined with the practical implementation of innovative solutions,” said Breece Robertson, director of partnerships and strategy for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “We can’t address global challenges like climate change and inequity without access to data, science and technologies that enable everyone to act effectively.”

The potential for geospatial technology to improve conservation is well demonstrated. In one powerful application, regional planners in Tucson, Arizona, worked with nonprofit partners, including the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, to map the tree canopy, surface temperatures, and other data to help communities to better-manage stormwater, and to prioritize where to plant trees. In another case, Denver’s regional planning agency is using high-resolution maps to classify land cover into eight categories for a wide range of possible uses, including to understand habitat connectivity and quality to guide investment in green infrastructure.

In addition to advancing land and water conservation, geospatial technology can inform decisions in urban contexts. Its applications include analyzing cities’ carbon footprints, exploring the conservation potential of brownfield sites, revealing local variations in air quality, and mapping parks, open spaces, and urban corridors for wildlife.

“Some organizations are already using geospatial technology to understand what is happening on the ground with greater and greater precision,” said Jeffrey Allenby, director of geospatial technology for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The center will bring this capability to organizations of all sizes and scales by building customized tools that are easy to use for all staff, even those with no background or training in technology.”

“The center builds on the Lincoln Institute’s long track record of pioneering ideas that have transformed land policy,” Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. “Mac” McCarthy wrote in an essay in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions represents another transformational idea—by making land, water, and mapping technology universal, we can enable people and organizations to collaborate and achieve impact that is orders-of-magnitude greater than what they can accomplish today. Like lifting a fog, applying geospatial technology will enable anyone to see what is happening anywhere on the Earth. It will make the planet feel that much smaller, and the solutions to humanity’s toughest problems that much easier to grasp.”

For more information, visit cgs.earth or email cgs@lincolninst.edu.

Leadership of the Center for Geospatial Solutions

Anne Scott, Executive Director

Anne brings leadership experience in public and community health and international development, and she is particularly passionate about achieving cost-effective outcomes that can be replicated and scaled. She has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on the implementation and evaluation of large-scale health and environmental programs funded by the U.S. and European governments, and philanthropic foundations. Anne has held executive positions at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in London, the Charlottesville (Virginia) Area Community Foundation and, most recently, Boston-based Pathfinder International. She is a prior board chair of the Chesapeake Conservancy. Anne has a Ph.D. in medical anthropology and an MBA in finance, as well as post-doctoral qualifications in science and diplomacy, and health and child survival.

Jeffrey Allenby, Director of Geospatial Technology.

Jeff brings a wealth of experience developing systems-focused solutions at the intersection of technology and the natural world. Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, Jeff was the director of conservation technology at the Chesapeake Conservancy and cofounder of the Conservancy’s Conservation Innovation Center, building it from scratch into a globally recognized pioneer in the application of technology to improve environmental decision making in the Chesapeake Bay and across the world. Jeff worked previously for the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on projects to support local climate change adaptation. Jeff has a M.E.M. and a certificate in geospatial analysis from Duke University and a B.S. from the University of Richmond. Jeff also serves as a member of the advisory board for the Internet of Water.

Breece Robertson, Director of Partnerships and Strategy

Breece has more than 18 years of experience leading collaborative and strategic initiatives that leverage data-driven platforms, GIS, research, and planning for the park and conservation fields. Breece combines geospatial technology and storytelling to inspire, activate, educate, and engage. During her career at The Trust for Public Land, she led geospatial innovations that supported the protection of 3,000+ places, over 2+ million acres of land, provided park access to over 9 million people, and achieved $74 billion in voter-approved funding for parks and conservation. She is a skilled leader, collaborator, implementer, and creative visionary with a legacy of building award-winning teams and community-driven GIS approaches for strategic conservation and park creation. Esri, the world’s leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, twice has honored Robertson for innovation in helping communities meet park and conservation goals. In 2006, she was awarded the Esri Special Achievement in GIS award and in 2012, the “Making a Difference” award – a prestigious presidential award.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.

Will Jason is director of communications at the Lincoln Institute.

Image: NOAA Data Enterprise (NDE) VIIRS daily global active fire detections, UMD Geographical Sciences VIIRS Active Fire site, http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/pages/mapsData.php.

Related

President’s Message: Center for Geospatial Solutions: Think Globally, Map Locally

City Tech: Precision-Mapping Water in the Desert

In the 1980s, not long after China had opened up to global trade and commerce, the nation’s farmland began succumbing to rapid urbanization. The explosive growth of cities consumed an estimated 7 million to 12 million acres of prime farmland from 1987 to 1995. This pattern led to dramatic changes in the landscape and grave concerns about food security. Aware that no farms meant no food for the country’s growing population—and just a few decades removed from a devastating famine that had cost the lives of 20 million to 50 million people between 1958 and 1961—the central government enacted regulations requiring those who converted farmland for other uses to ensure the protection of the same amount of farmland elsewhere.

China’s Ministry of Land and Resources tried heroically to meet these zero net loss mandates. But it was impossible to monitor land quality and local land exchange decisions, especially with last-generation management systems like limited data, paper records, and low-resolution maps. Urbanization continued apace, swallowing an estimated 82 million acres of farmland between 2001 and 2013. In most cases, the rich farmlands around growing cities were “replaced” with less productive woodlands and grasslands. To get higher yields from less fertile land, farmers had to adopt more intensive cultivation practices, relying on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. These technical solutions maintained food security, but at a high cost, including the depletion of aquifers and contamination of soil.

China is now a net importer of grains and future production hinges on finding new sources of water for irrigation. Concerns are growing about food security once more, but something else is changing in China: the land and resources agency—now called the Ministry of Natural Resources—is modernizing the system it uses to monitor and enforce the farmland preservation policy. This includes adopting geospatial data from satellite imagery and other remote sensing to map and evaluate the quality of reclaimed land. It also includes monitoring urban frontiers to better guide development decisions.

Recent improvements in the quality of satellite imagery and computer analysis methods are making it possible to monitor China’s farmland preservation efforts with increasing precision. These improvements also hold great promise for land and water conservation around the globe. This fall, the Lincoln Institute is taking a major step to expand the accessibility and use of such cutting-edge technology by launching the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS).

CGS is a new hub of data, expertise, and services for people and organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors working to conserve land and water resources. It will expand access to geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other tools that can inform decisions about land and water management. Although these tools have existed for decades, many organizations lack the data, equipment, staff, or expertise to implement them, limiting their ability to achieve their goals and to collaborate with others at large scales. The center will focus on opening access to cutting-edge technology for historically oppressed or marginalized people and communities; governments in low- to middle-income countries, regions, or states; nonprofit organizations with limited resources; and startup businesses, or businesses operating in developing or restricted economies.

We’re launching this effort because we know that sweeping reforms like those China implemented to preserve farmland are just the first step toward an intended outcome. To succeed, such policies must be followed by the less glamorous work of persistent enforcement and monitoring, with adjustments to the rules in response to lessons learned. In addition, if policy makers hope to manage land policy at the national or international level, they need access to the best possible data and precision tools to track and respond to what is happening locally. CGS, led by staff members with deep expertise in mapping technologies, organizational development, public health, and conservation, will provide data, conduct analysis, and build customized tools to respond to increasing demand from organizations of all sizes, with all levels of technical capacity.

CGS builds on the Lincoln Institute’s long track record of pioneering ideas that have transformed land policy at national and global levels. Beginning in the 1970s, the Lincoln Institute played a leading role in developing computerized property assessment. This revolutionized how local governments around the world administered the property tax—the most important component of local public revenues in most places. In the early 1980s, the Lincoln Institute convened some 40 land trusts to mobilize efforts to conserve private land in the United States to complement public land conservation. By expanding the scope and use of conservation easements and advocating successfully for state and federal tax breaks for private land conservation, the coalition, which became the Land Trust Alliance, has since helped to protect more than 56 million acres of private land—equal to the land area of Minnesota. And in 2014, we launched the International Land Conservation Network, which connects civic and private land conservation organizations and people around the globe, and has spawned major conservation initiatives on several continents.

With the launch of CGS, we are prepared to apply our expertise to the work of supporting and amplifying today’s bold land-based initiatives. Earlier this year, for example, the Campaign for Nature launched an effort to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. The “30 by 30 Campaign” seeks to address climate change, support a growing global population, and prevent mass extinctions by protecting critical natural resources and ecosystems, and monitoring and managing their protection in perpetuity. This colossal effort can learn from farmland protection efforts in China and other bold efforts to manage land and resources at national or global levels, and it will benefit from the kind of tools and analysis CGS brings to the table.

An important first question is whether we can leverage the traumas of 2020—a pandemic, devastating wildfires in Australia and the United States, the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related calamities—to forge the political will to take meaningful global action. Can we convince global politicians and voters that the climate crisis or mass extinctions threaten human survival and require the type of coordinated global action sparked by the pandemic? Second, can we sharpen the global goal of 30 by 30 to motivate more specific (and practical) actions at lower levels of geography to avoid unintended consequences? While 30 by 30 is a handy slogan, the 30 percent of lands and oceans the campaign chooses to protect will have direct bearing on whether we can reverse the climate crisis or avert mass extinctions.

We will need to determine which land and other resources to protect, which to protect first, and how to do it. We will need to monitor local actors to make sure their actions are consistent with global goals and strategies. And we’ll need to find ways to hold key actors accountable for meeting critical benchmarks. Finally, once we’ve identified the specific ecosystems we want to protect, we will need legal mechanisms to protect them and means to monitor protection and stewardship in perpetuity. It will require thousands of people equipped with the tools and training to monitor and enforce legal agreements and the authority to do so.

The Lincoln Institute can contribute to this bold global effort by helping the Campaign determine which land and other resources to protect first, how to monitor and manage that protection, and, with the help of ILCN, how to navigate the relevant legal mechanisms across different countries with different legal systems. In parallel efforts, the Lincoln Institute is building distance learning curricula to train local government officials and practitioners to use new land and water management tools and approaches more effectively. CGS can decentralize decision making by providing tools and training that can be deployed locally to support global goals. By making mapping technology universally available, we can enable people and organizations to collaborate and achieve impact in land and water conservation that is orders of magnitude greater than what they can accomplish alone.

The Center for Geospatial Solutions exists to bring new clarity and insight to the business of global land conservation, increasing access to data in the name of building a more sustainable future. Like lifting a fog, applying geospatial technology will enable anyone to see what is happening anywhere on the Earth. It will make the planet feel that much smaller, and the solutions to humanity’s toughest problems that much easier to grasp.

Image: The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) will expand access to geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other tools that can inform decisions about land and water management. This CGS map combines social and environmental data to highlight landscapes that are relied on by  at-risk species, facing development pressures, and adjacent to existing protected areas (shown in green). Credit: CGS.