Arizona State and Local Government Documents Collection

The Arizona Water Banking Authority was created in 1996 to store the unused portion of Arizona’s annual allocation of the Colorado River. By storing this unused water the AWBA secures a dependable water supply necessary to ensure the state’s long-term prosperity. The plan is intended to govern the operations of the AWBA over the course of the entire calendar year.

The Arizona Water Banking Authority was created in 1996 to store the unused portion of Arizona’s annual allocation of Colorado River water. Until the AWBA was created, Arizona had not fully utilized its 2.8 million acre-foot allocation of Colorado River water and the state’s leaders recognized that leaving a portion of Arizona’s allocation in the river was a lost opportunity. The AWBA was created to provide assurances that water users within the state had secure, long-term water supplies.

The primary purpose of the Inventory is to identify storage capacity available to the Arizona Water Banking Authority to meet its water storage goals. Inclusion of a facility in the Inventory does not equate to a commitment by the AWBA to utilize any specific facility in the future. The AWBA will continue to determine annually which facilities will be used through the development of the Annual Plan of Operation. Conversely, not including a facility in the Inventory does not preclude the AWBA from utilizing that facility in a future Annual Plan. It does, however, preclude the facility from being utilized for interstate water storage, until such time as it is included in an updated Inventory.

Water banking is one of Arizona's most important water management strategies, and its success depends on effective planning. This joint plan helps advance the objective, articulated in the intergovernmental agreement among CAP, ADWR and AWBA, to develop a coordinated and cooperative planning process that includes distribution and recovery of water stored by the AWBA.

A massive pile of wood debris caught fire and burned from October 27 to October 31, 2001, in northern Pinal County, Arizona. The fire consumed wood debris from citrus trees that had been stored in an approximately 25-acre area in Pinal County near the Queen Creek area. The fire generated a large quantity of smoke. Persons reported smelling the smoke up to 40 miles away from the fire. Meteorological conditions during the fire intermittently created conditions that limited lift, especially at night, causing smoke to settle in residential neighborhoods in the Queen Creek area. The Arizona Department of Health Services issued public health advisories for the evenings of October 29 and 30. This report summarizes the events that occurred during the fire and analyzes the data collected by the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to determine the extent of the public health threat from the fire.

The Rodeo-Chediski Fire Complex began as a small blaze in a remote region of east-central Arizona and within days erupted into the largest wildfire in Arizona history. Fortunately, no lives were lost. However, from June 18, 2002 to the time of its containment on July 7, 2002, the Rodeo-Chediski fire destroyed over 490 structures and 467,000 acres of ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper woodland—an estimated 500 million to 1.3 billion board feet of timber. Jurisdictions involved included the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, the Tonto National Forest, and private lands adjacent to Highway 260, from the Town of Forest Lakes east to the City of Show Low. Virtually all of the acres burned were in Navajo County, with some damage in the contiguous counties of Coconino, Apache, and Gila Counties. This health assessment describes the fire events and summarizes the resulting public health impacts from the fire.

The Arizona Department of Health Services Cancer Registry has identified 7 cases of childhood leukemia in the Sierra Vista, Arizona area since 1995. Five of the childhood leukemia cases were identified as a class of lymphoid leukemia and 2 of the cases were a class of myeloid leukemia. Based on random variation, a total of 6 or fewer cases of leukemia would have been expected over those seven years. An analysis of the data suggests that the number of cases is statistically elevated for the time period 1995 to 2001. The objective of this report is to determine whether there are any documented environmental exposures from drinking water, ambient air or waste sites that may have placed residents of the Sierra Vista, Arizona area at greater risk of developing childhood leukemia.