In towns like Ajo, Pine and Bouse, residents worry about water supplies and water quality as pipes and wells fail.
People don’t really realize exactly how expensive it is to deliver water to your faucet every time you turn it on.Perhaps the biggest issues that small rural utilities encounter is that when their systems break down they don’t have enough paying customers to afford the fixes.
Judy Thomsen gets drinking water at the Bouse RV Park on March 1, 2022. Water pipes in Bouse are crumbling and need an arsenic filtration system to meet environmental regulations.The electric bill for the utility is $1,200 a month. Then there are the salaries of part-time employees. Every time you have to replace an arsenic removal system it’s $40,000 to $50,000. And a decent well — about 300 feet deep — is going to cost $750,000 to $800,000.
The Corporation Commissioners were not always aware of which communities were in trouble until those communities came to them with their problems. But one way to find out is to see how long a water company has gone since its last rate hike. Kim Canady walks back to his RV after filling his water bottles at the Bouse RV Park on March 1, 2022. Bouse residents are worried about water supplies and quality in the desert community.That still doesn’t help people like Teri Ryan who moved to Arizona from California and is now facing triple-digit increases in utility rates because Ajo’s utility company decided to make decades of deferred improvements all at once.
“The system is wrong in the way it has been set up,” Ryan said. “Everything has become for profit. Basic services should not be for profit.”Along the Mogollon Rim, the towns of Pine and Strawberry are facing a water crisis as supplies have decreased and population has increased.A hundred miles north of Phoenix, beneath a canopy of Ponderosa pines and Douglas fir, Pine and Strawberry cling to the Mogollon Rim.
Add to that the Airbnb phenomenon and demand for housing — and in turn water — began to exceed supply. Pine and Strawberry were suddenly using far more water than could be replenished by snowmelt or monsoon rains. Pointing to “older estimates,” Ray’s presentation states that it would cost Pine and Strawberry $135 million, or about $42,000 for each home and business in the area, to dig five deep wells, replace all the broken pipes and erect the necessary storage facilities and pumping stations to completely renovate the system.
Hemphill added that she’s only been in town for three years, but her monthly water bill keeps climbing — from $48 to $62 — because of all the broken pipes and loss of water.The towns of Pine and Strawberry have seen a population boom since the pandemic as people moved into town and Airbnbs became even more popular. This means there's even greater demand for water.His family moved to the area from Buffalo in 1958. They built a cabin just up the hill from Pine’s main strip.
The towns would also need to build a treatment plant at a combined cost of $85 million, Reski said, and the only way to finance that would be through a grant. The owner of the water utilities — Colorado businessman Jason Williamson — has posted documents from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality on his companies’ websites certifying that the water has been tested and is safe to drink. But some residents aren’t sure whether to trust them.
“Things have done a 180 in terms of service,” said Jim Lavery, a former fire department captain who lives in the subdivision. “I don’t know whether they knew you were coming. But they’ve done a phenomenal job of giving me service again.” This one at Roosevelt Lakes has been in the works for two and a half years, he said. It entails changing out all the meters, replacing the galvanized iron pipes and digging a new well.
“There are people in this subdivision who are living on retirement incomes who are just getting by day to day,” Somers said. “They don’t have an extra stash of money lying around.”“Our goal is to create a more reliable water service,” he said.John Bennett takes his monthly meter readings on March 1, 2022, at the well in Bouse. Town residents are worried about wells they use running dry.
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