From opinion columnist joannaallhands: Pine and Strawberry should be a lesson to us all: It's better to stop a water problem before it starts than to try to fix it after it rears its ugly head.
. Those who thought they could build without water – or who had a well and surrounding uses sucked it dry – are now in a world of hurt.This is not a dig on those efforts, but rather a cautionary tale about what happens when our development decisions fail to reflect our water realities.
Water delivery to these homes is a mishmash. Some properties have wells; others haul water. Some belong to a water improvement district, which delivers water to residents from its own wells. The Pine-Strawberry Water Improvement District is the largest, with about 3,200 connections, but it has two major problems:
Only 14 of the district’s 38 wells are functional. Most of its shallower wells have gone dry, and as the Payson Roundup has reported, some of its deeper ones haveThe infrastructure that delivers this water to customers leaks horribly – nearly a third of what is pumped is lost each year. That’s not necessarily the district’s fault – as it expanded over time, it inherited a mess of shoddy pipes that homebuilders had installed on the cheap and with little oversight.
, $7.5 million of which must be repaid, from the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, which was created to help smaller communities address water and wastewater problems.Not to mention that even if the district fixes them, it still faces more demand from homes during peak vacation rental season than its wells can provide.