.....Rio Verde was paying Scottsdale to get water from them.......but due to water shortage, Scottsdale has cut them off from their municipal water supply......at some point Rio Verde may run out of water.....


....they had a story on the news of a family that has to conserve......they only do dishes once a week, etc......


......this may be the beginning of other 'cut-off' as droughts persist.....


Arizona suburb sues the city of Scottsdale for cutting off its water supply

....An Arizona suburb has filed a lawsuit against the city of Scottsdale after the city cut off the community from its municipal water supply amid extreme drought conditions and declining water levels in the Colorado River.

In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court, residents in the unincorporated community of Rio Verde Foothills are seeking an injunction against Scottsdale to force the city to resume water services.

The dispute comes after the federal government last year announced unprecedented water cuts in Arizona due to water shortages along the Colorado River. The Biden administration has urged seven states to reduce water usage 2 to 4 million acre-feet, up to a third of the river's average flow, as drought conditions grow worse in the Colorado River basin.

The river's decline has prompted the loss of three quarters of the water from the country's largest reservoirs. Last week, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs unveiled a report showing that the desert west of Phoenix doesn't have enough groundwater supplies to move forward plans to construct homes in the area.

Scottsdale warned Rio Verde Foothills more than a year ago that the town's water supply would be cut off as it faced projections of a historic drought and dwindling reservoir levels in the western U.S. Scottsdale said it must focus on water conservation for its own residents and would not continue to sell water to the roughly 500 homes in Rio Verde Foothills.

Earlier this month, hundreds of homes outside of Scottsdale could no longer access water from the city, leaving residents with no reliable source of water.

Rio Verde Foothills residents said Scottsdale is in a position to accept delivery of water from EPCOR, a water utility company, and treat the water for domestic use at EPCOR's expense so that residents have water during the 24-to-36-month time period that the company needs to get the necessary approval to do so, according to the lawsuit.

However, Scottsdale has said it would not work with any external companies to provide Rio Verde Foothills residents with water, arguing that it's not legally obligated to continue providing water service to Rio Verde Foothills since the town lies beyond Scottsdale's municipal boundaries.

Scottsdale, in a statement issued on Monday, said that Rio Verde Foothills is a separate community governed by Maricopa County and the city's action does not preclude Rio Verde Foothills residents from purchasing water from other sources.

"Scottsdale has warned and advised that it is not responsible for Rio Verde for many years, especially given the requirements of the City's mandated drought plan," the statement read. "The city remains firm in that position, and confident it is on the right side of the law."


........no water.........for you...........and you......and you.............?!

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2023 04:11PM by NewtonMP2100.

Whats the basis of the lawsuit? Hey, you have to sell us water!??

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mattkime
Whats the basis of the lawsuit? Hey, you have to sell us water!??

It's a 500 strong development of $500,000 + homes that will be worthless without h2o access. What more reason do they need?

As our former president has demonstrated you only need a willing lawyer to launch a baseless lawsuit.

This stinks, but they need to go after the developers first. That's who knowingly put the homeowners in this position.

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datbeme
This stinks, but they need to go after the developers first. That's who knowingly put the homeowners in this position.

Nah, it is the people who bought out there in the middle of the desert. They wouldn't build them if they didn't buy them. People should do some research when the buy a house.

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datbeme
This stinks, but they need to go after the developers first. That's who knowingly put the homeowners in this position.

They don't have jurisdiction outside the city borders. Perhaps they could be faulted for connecting to them in the first place.

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well, Rio Verde means Green River. I am not sure what are they complaining about, they have a river right there, right? </sarcasm>

yeah, good luck to them, they bought houses in the middle of nowhere, it's their problem.

Looks like developers built using a loophole and some residents enjoy not paying Scottsdale taxes. The situation had been brewing for years. It appears that Scottdale gave them plenty of warning that a cut off was coming. I guess trying to get a bunch of people paying into a centralized system when they were people that resistant to paying into a centralized system is like wrangling cats.


[www.azcentral.com]


For years, Scottsdale has warned that it would eventually cut off water hauling to Rio Verde Foothills, a patchwork of roughly 2,000 homes nestled just outside city limits.

Last year, it set a deadline. About 500 of the community's homes — 1,000 people — rely on hauled water, and the city informed those property owners that they would need to find another water source by 2023.

Despite months of work and disagreements among neighbors in pursuit of solutions, that deadline came and passed with no plan — and Scottsdale turned off the taps. Now, residents are in a crisis and bitterly divided.

As the situation continues to unfold, here are a few things to know about the community and its water woes.

Instead, if developers build subdivisions on county land, they must secure water and prove that the community has enough to last 100 years.

But some developments across the county and state fall into a loophole in the law. There, developers split properties fewer than six times to build new homes, meaning the houses aren't technically inside of subdivisions. And that means private property owners never had to prove a 100-year water supply.

These types of developments are called “wildcat” subdivisions, and Rio Verde Foothills is a textbook example. Essentially, some homes there were built without any regard for residents' water future. And because the groundwater there is spotty, not all residents have the option of just drilling a well.

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Ways to improve web conference image and sound quality. [forums.macresource.com]

‘ But over the past few years, there has been a frenzy of home construction in the area, fueled by cheap land prices and developers who took advantage of a loophole in Arizona’s groundwater laws to construct homes without any fixed water supply.

To prevent unsustainable development in a desert state, Arizona passed a law in 1980 requiring subdivisions with six or more lots to show proof that they have a 100-year water supply.
But developers in Rio Verde Foothills have been sidestepping the rule by carving larger parcels into sections with four or five houses each, creating the impression of a miniature suburbia, but one that did not need to legally prove it had water.

“It’s a slipped-through-the-cracks community,” said Ms. Porter, with the Kyl Center for Water Policy. ‘



[www.nytimes.com]

These people who buy houses where there is no water are idiots.

Bunch of grifters who wanted something for nothing...let em go thirsty!

Let's see now...

1. The developers used lawyers and sleazy tactics to subvert laws designed to stop development where there was no water.

2. The homeowners happily bought into places with no water supply for bargain basement prices with no taxes that could be used to pay for a water supply in a region of the country where water is scarce and valuable.

3. The owners had water trucked in to fill their individual storage tanks from the nearby city that has a tax base that pays for water supply infrastructure.

4. The city gave them ample warning that this would not last and that the owners would have to find their own water.

5. The owners did nothing to try to find a sustainable water supply.

6. The owners hire more lawyers to try to obtain free water from the nearby city whose residents are taxed to pay for water.

I don't consider this a "slipped through the cracks" community. It's a "we don't pay no stinking taxes" grifter's paradise community.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2023 12:54PM by davester.

yeah, they probably want to stinking government, no taxes, freedom and all that, but now complain. Nice.

I don't think the water was free, my understanding was they paid for it, but you are right, it was probably subsidized by the taxpayers. The city could also continue to sell them water at high, very high prices. That will force them to look for alternatives.

OOOHHHH, I can buy a big house! It's away from the city! On a big lot??? Quiet!!!

What? The water bill is a bit high? So what!!!??? I can get a big house! Away from the city! On a big lot! Quiet!!

Some of these (idiots) didn't look past this, and didn't pay attention that their water was being trucked in, not piped in, but TRUCKED in from the city. Either that, or they willfully ignored it.

My folks bought a place a bit far out from the city (38 miles as the crow flies, east and south of Oklahoma City OK), as they (a) were wanting quiet; (b) were retired; and (c) gave Dad something to work on; and finally (d) they could afford. Yes, the place has water, as in from a well on the property. It wasn't a strong flow per se, but at least it was water (the well was old). It was after they bought that they realized that a perhaps a mile further over and they wouldn't be able to get water, as in, no water there. Drill all you want to, but there was no water under that ground. Folks who lived over there depended on rain catchment systems for the most part, bought their drinking water at the store, did their clothes at the laundromat over in town ... yeah. It could have been my folks, and all because they were told that there was water on the property when they looked at it.

Personally, I was rather surprised because I had never considered that there are places where there is no underground water available to the residents. Perhaps a city that can afford to drill thousands of feet into an aquifer (if it exists), but not to regular folks.

I'm not excusing these people in AZ in any way, as they SHOULD have checked THOROUGHLY on it. Even if the developer (or the agent) told them there was was water there. After all, it IS the desert, and it didn't get that way just because it wished to be. And developers and agents have been known to tell a falsehood or two.