Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

Q. It’s not a current position
A. No.
Q. It doesn’t seem like Arizona has as many water commissions or things as
Nevada or Colorado
A. It doesn’t. This is an interesting phenomenon, too. When I went to Texas, I was
stunned to find out how many different water entities and agencies they have.
They’re kind of like counties. Texas has like 280 counties or something. They
have an equal number of water districts and they’re little tiny entities. Despite the
law of the biggest pump and the fact that it’s Texas, they’ve tended to treat water
in little isolated pieces; whereas in Arizona, we’ve tended to have a few large,
well-funded, well-managed, water agency type things like SRP, CAP, and the
various cities. City of Phoenix and City of Mesa have very large water portfolios.
And so our water decision making is somewhat more concentrated than it is in
other states but in the same token, we don’t have a water czar. In Nevada there
is a State Engineer and in Colorado there is State Engineer who gets to rule and
adjudicate on water rights and water disputes. We didn’t even have the
Department of Water Resources until it was created under the Groundwater
Management Act. Herb Guenther, the Director, and all the previous Directors
really have very little authority over surface water. Their authority is only over
groundwater and by large, only in the AMAs. So we have a multiple decision
making context.
Interview with Grady Gammage
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