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Unprecedent growth in the Valley has lead to decreased air quality from dust due to construction, increased emissions from excessive traffic and a greater drain on our existing infrastructure including our limited water supply. There are three areas we must immediately address including transportation planning, water conservation and preservation in order to improve our air quality and ensure a continued abundent supply of water.
Transportation Planning: Alleviating traffic congestion and reducing emissions from automobiles must be addressed if we are to reduce the number of ozone alert days and high pollution advisories in the Valley. During the past four years several initiatives have moved forward at the legislative and county level to increase public transportation and highways. We need to continue our support of these initiatives by funding them on time or ahead of time. We also must expand on these initiatives by developing cross-county initiatives to ensure that there are adequate highways in Pinal, Pima, Yavapai and other surrounding counties to service the population growth that commutes into Maricopa County every day.
Water Conservation: Several municipalities have developed water conservation programs. However, these programs do not go far enough to address potential shortfalls in water supply. We need a statewide plan to address water conservation including stronger policies in regards to rural development and its depletion on the groundwater supplies that service the Valley. All Counties need to develop policies that address assured water supply and the state must enforce its policy regarding a 100-year assured supply for all new developments. The lack of enforcement is the biggest failure of the state policy.
Preservation: The best way we can ensure that future communities will be developed with more consideration for their drain on current infrastructure is for the legislature to pass innovative legislation that would empower the land department to consider highest and best use when selling state land. Doing this will allow the state greater flexibility and allow local taxpayers to purchase state trust land for conservation without having to compete with developers.
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