Environmentalists are criticizing a new Governor’s council that’s assigned with helping Arizona solve its long term gap in water supplies.
Governor Ducey announced the creation of the Water Augmentation Council last week as a way to address drought and the projected deficit in the state’s water supplies in the coming decades. It’s made up primarily of stakeholders from state and local government, agriculture, business and academia.
But a spokesperson for the Sierra Club says it’s disappointing that only one representative from the environmental community is on it, since more than 70 percent of the state's water goes to agriculture. And that the focus should not be on augmentation, but rather on conservation.
Others on the council, however, say the goals will be broad and not just limited to large scale water augmentation projects.