For Star subscribers: Stealth and closed-door negotiations resulted in Arizona's pioneering 1980 groundwater law getting through the reluctant Legislature.
Tony Davis The struggle over Arizona's groundwater management is nothing new. The story of how Arizona enacted the toughest groundwater law in the country back in 1980 proves that.
Six years later, the Ford Foundation selected the law as one of the 10 most innovative state and local government programs in the United States.It was one part stealth negotiating between Babbitt and the U.S. Interior Department. And it was one part extended, closed-door negotiations among all the key water players, which violated all norms of democratic process and transparency — and worked.
The Interior Department was getting restless over the Central Arizona Project because the law had language saying the state had promised to control its groundwater over-drafting. Those forces all came together. Interior Department was in the background for the first 90 to 95% of the negotiations. But as we reached an impasse, I contacted Cecil Andrus, who was then the secretary, and said we need to get the Interior Department suited up and into the game. I kind of made a deal with him.
Babbitt: Well, bear in mind that the Legislature had failed, again and again, over the preceding decade. They’d put up groundwater study commissions. They’d actually been unable to do anything.
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