Arizona Wastes Water Supply on Prisons
By Carl ToersBijns
Back in January, 2005, the Arizona Republic article titled Farms swallowing most of Arizona's water written by Shaun McKinnon shed some interesting facts on how Arizona farmers consume their ground water. Writing "The arid conditions are obvious - Phoenix receives less rain in a year than some American cities get in a month, there's only one natural lake of any size and few rivers even flow year-round. But we use water sometimes as if the supply were endless. In an average year, Arizonans go through about 7.25 million acre-feet, or nearly 2.4 trillion gallons. Put a different way, that amount of water could support a residential population of nearly 30 million people."
The article goes on to read "In Greater Phoenix, farms now use about 46 percent of the supply, down from two-thirds or more just 30 years ago. Industry - mostly power plants, sand and gravel operations, and golf courses - uses about 6 percent. The rest is residential, business and government - everything from Arizona State University's 50,000-student Tempe campus to your back yard." Farmers have also served as an important buffer for the state's water supply, in effect holding on to a reserve that could be used in dry times or converted to residential use. But as farms give way to subdivisions, the reserve is shrinking and water once used in fields is now claimed by homes and businesses. That change in demand is forcing water providers to watch more carefully the way water is used and look for ways to better manage it as the supply tightens."
In a clever plan to expand prisons inside Arizona through the means already established by private prison lobbyist with close ties to the governor's office, citizens and taxpayers alike are totally unaware of the consequences of building more prisons inside the state. Not one politician has stood up during any hearings related to prison expansion how these new beds provided by Corrections Corporations of America, the GEO group and others who have bid on recent contracts impact our natural resources and ground water. Perhaps they all share the same view that the water supply in Arizona is endless and to tap into the precious commodity is nothing to worry about. After all, who worries about running out of water in a desert state such as the Grand Canyon state?
Because of the recent contract bidding, there will be a series of six town halls in AZ where locals will attend presentations from for-profits seeking to site there to respond to which will impact our state's resource hugely. For example, does the average citizen realize that for every 1,000-bed prison in the desert uses about 150 gallons per prisoner per day, so we're talking about 55 million gallons of water annually? That's 170 acre-feet. Multiply this by the amount of beds requested in the current expansion and that's a lot of water taken out of the ground to accommodate every new prisoner brought into the state for either detention or incarceration purposes.
One must wonder how much of a drain this state can take for such a purpose as incarceration and how this will impact future development of our communities as the water is abused in the manner proposed.
Last February, the city of Eloy held a meeting where CCA has a conglomerate interest in prisons and the construction of more. During this meeting many issues were discussed yet none were challenged by the council or the mayor [who has demonstrated a very strong possibility of a conflict of interest]. The utility manager made a presentation where water and water waste treatment facilities were discussed and illustrated the drain on the local water resource for so many prisoners denying the citizens of the town any main share of the water rights as they are now used solely to support the prisons built there on surrounding lands. One must ask the same question again and inquire how much water and how much waste will be generated out of these prisons if expanded by 3,000 prisoners and the answer was a head shaking, shoulder shrugging duh I don't know attitude by the council who is only interested in the wealth that is produced by these prisons for profit organizations. Doing the math on the expansion, Arizona landowners, taxpayers and law biding citizens will be giving up over 274 million gallons of water for such purposes in addition to the costs of building the infrastructure that is required to provide such services to the prison complex. Blind folded and ears plugged, the council quickly approved the CCA request unanimously, with only one member asking a question.
It appears that the locals in Eloy and all those other communities considering building private prisons on their local lands have forgotten just how precious the water supply is in this state. Where does the water come from when it runs out and Arizona is dry? What is the future of our state if the development continues and the prisons suck the water out of the ground for commercial purposes of incarceration? Will our children benefit from our water supply or will they suffer? The answer is in water management techniques already established to be effective but ignored in Arizona for the sake of building prisons. One must ask why Arizona politicians are willing to sacrifice our ecological and environmental future for the sake of prisons when there are so many other better reasons for water conservation and water use in this state.
Sources:
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special26/articles/0103conserve-main03.html?&wired
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/07/11/20110711arizona-new-private-prison-contracts.html
Frank Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment