Ducey threatens veto of water bill that ignores his principles
CAP canal just north of Florence town limits on the 79.
Gov. Doug Ducey threatened Tuesday to veto any drought contingency plan that does not equitably divide up the pain of Arizona having less water in 2020 and eventually leads to lower water use in the state.
The vow, the governor’s strongest statement to date on the issue, comes as the key players in crafting a plan appear to be circling around an agreement of who loses water when the state is forced to reduce the amount it can draw from Lake Mead and the Colorado River.
“Several details need to be worked out,” Ducey told those attending a water conference here. “But we are very close.”
But Ducey also acknowledged that there are diverse interests who have their own ideas about how to allocate the water and who should be forced to take a larger share of the cuts, deriding them as “other, more simplistic plans.” And the political reality is that any plan and the funding to support it has to be approved by the Legislature with 90 members each beholden to certain constituencies.
