Wither the Drought?
Knowing that the Southwest has been in a drought, off and on, for the past decade or so, many people ask about our water situation and how it might affect Sedona real estate and the quality of life here.
Happily, I can report that Sedona has always had one of the best water supplies in Arizona. Located just below the Colorado Plateau (aka the Mogollon Rim), we are sitting on a terrific aquifer that has been described by Arizona Water Institute and Northern Arizona University hydrologist, Dr. Abe Springer, as vastly more than adequate for future Sedona needs indefinitely. This past year I attended a local water seminar at which Dr. Springer affirmed that position and went on to say that we have “one of the best water supplies in the west.” He further said that we are using a tiny fraction of the available water and our limited population growth projections won’t make much of a dent in it in the future. Some people (not locals) believe that it’s gotten dryer here every year, historically. Certainly we have been in something of drought in the last 10 or 12 years. But, within that time we have had some very wet years that have recharged the reservoirs serving Phoenix and given some relief to our local ecology. In the past few months we’ve had a half a dozen good-sized storms that caused a few of the reservoirs downstream to overflow. Even in full-on drought years the droughts aren’t all that obvious in arid or semi-arid (as Sedona is) areas. Fire danger goes up, that’s for sure and several years ago it seemed to hit the Manzanita bushes fairly hard in spots and my favorite waterfall runs only when it rains. And, the pine bark beetle appears to show up when the pine trees are stressed from dry conditions - fortunately, we (knock on wood) haven’t seen that here in a few years. Some of my favorite mountain areas of Colorado, New Mexico, and south of us here in Arizona, however, have been ravaged by those little s.o.b.s.Where I grew up in Upstate NY, when you had a drought, you knew it. Here it’s not in your face like a dying lawn. In Sedona, even during our severest drought times, we’ve never had water rationing and there are no restrictions on building pools or any other heavy water uses.The only shadow on that optimistic note is that we’re seeing more water pumping and usage up on the Colorado Plateau as Flagstaff expands and there is some concern in Sedona that this could affect our aquifer. So Sedona is gearing up for that battle.