San Pedro River Basin Binational Alliance
For information about the new (2003-04) effort that has evolved from the Dialogues, please visit the Alliance page. Archived notes and information from Alliance meetings are available here.
San Pedro Dialogue on Water and Climate
San Pedro Dialogue on Water and Climate is a participatory effort of local residents in the Sierra Vista sub-basin and the Mexican portion of the San Pedro River Basin to improve public access to water-related information and to develop new opportunities for public participation in water management and water policy in the San Pedro River basin. The program is facilitated by the Udall Center.
Sections on this page:
Background
Initial meetings
Water-interests survey
Ongoing projects
Relationship to Upper San Pedro Partnership
Newsletters
2003 Efforts
Background (top)
During the 1998 public input process for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation's report, Sustaining and Enhancing Migratory Bird Habitat on the Upper San Pedro River, the Udall Center noted significant gaps in information
within the region that, if not addressed, would make resolution of the area's water management problems difficult to attain:
Since January 1999, the Udall Center, with funding from the Ford Foundation, has facilitated a policy dialogue to enhance the exchange of accurate information about the river among decision-makers and the general public. Since the adoption of comprehensive water-management plans in the United States has been frustrated in the past by negative public opinion and polarization among different interest groups within the basin, the Udall Center recognized that the community was extremely sensitive to outside interference and any process that was not perceived to be completely open. Therefore, the Center initiated a process that was community-driven and open to all interested parties.
Initial meetings (top)
In February 1999, the Udall Center convened a group of organizational representatives
and concerned citizens to discuss options for improving communication on water
issues in the basin. This group included representatives from city, county,
state, and federal governments; researchers; educators; environmentalists;
property rights advocates; and other concerned citizens.
Since a principal desire was to have the process be as community-driven as
possible, participants in the February 1999 meeting were presented with a
question: What processes would best encourage knowledge exchange on water
issues among residents of the Upper San Pedro River basin? Participants generated
a list of alternatives that they believed would address information-exchange
shortfalls. These alternatives generally fell into two categories: (1) education
and information exchange on water issues, and (2) coordinated water management,
research, and decisionmaking. During a series of group meetings during the
spring of 1999, the group agreed to begin by addressing education and information
exchange. In addition, the group formulated a goal statement for the process:
"To inspire and enable every community member to contribute to water-wise
planning and management activities in the Upper San Pedro River basin."
The group also gave itself a name: Dialogue San Pedro.
In subsequent work sessions, Dialogue San Pedro pursued the development of a regional public-information center as a means of accomplishing this goal. This center would have two principal aims: 1) to provide a central information clearinghouse for both technical and non-technical information on the San Pedro that would be of use to scientists, researchers, and other interested parties; and 2) to provide educational programs and materials to facilitate outreach to the broader community.
Water-interests survey (top)
In the fall of 1999, Dialogue San Pedro participants worked with staff from
the Cochise College Center for Economic Research to develop a water-interests
survey to assess the water- and San Pedro River-related topics residents of
the Upper San Pedro River Basin would like to know more about, and how they
would like to receive that information.
The survey was administered in two ways. People were randomly surveyed via
intercept interviews in Tombstone, Huachuca City, Sierra Vista, Bisbee, Hereford,
Whetstone, Palominas, and other unincorporated parts of Cochise County south
of Highway 82 and west of Highway 80. In addition, the survey was available
at community meetings, in public places, and via email to anyone who wanted
to participate. The survey was designed and administered to be statistically
representative of the region.
420 residents of the target area responded to the survey. Thirty-five percent of the respondents had lived in the basin for less than five years, and 19 percent had lived in the area 20 or more years.
Of those who filled out the survey, 89 percent were very interested or somewhat
interested in receiving more information on water issues. They were interested
in all of the topics listed on the survey and ranked them in the following
order of preference:
The survey showed that local residents prefer to get water information at home via newspapers, television, direct mail, or the Internet. Most survey respondents were not interested in receiving information at public meetings and workshops, libraries, or interpretive information centers. Currently, respondents get their water information from newspapers (70%), word of mouth (64%), radio (52%), and television (48%). Less than 20 percent receive information from the library or public meetings.
Survey respondents thought that most residents of the basin were not at all
well-informed or only somewhat informed about water issues. Only about 15
percent thought residents were well-informed or very well-informed on water
issues. The Cochise College survey team concluded that, "These statistics,
combined with the figures on level of interest, show the area wanting to know
more about water issues. The logical place to start is with the topics that
they are most interested in—personal water usage, public water policy, and
underground aquifer—and through the media most preferred—newspapers, television,
and Web sites."
Relationship to Upper San Pedro Partnership (top)
The Upper San Pedro Partnership, formed in 1998, is a consortium of federal,
state, and local agencies and other land-management or landowning organizations
involved in water management and policy activities in the Sierra Vista sub-basin.
The Partnership's purpose is "to coordinate and cooperate in the identification,
prioritization, and implementation of comprehensive policies and projects
to assist in meeting water needs in the Sierra Vista Sub-basin of the Upper
San Pedro River Basin."
In early 2000, the Upper San Pedro Partnership formed a public outreach subcommittee to help disseminate information about the Partnership's activities to the public and legislators, and to solicit public involvement on a water management plan.
Although the scope of the Partnership's public outreach subcommittee is narrower than Dialogue San Pedro's scope, Dialogue San Pedro participants are working actively with the Partnership's outreach subcommittee and hope to merge the interests of the two groups into a single collaborative effort.
Newsletters (top)
Starting in January 2000, the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy has published a brief newsletter to update interested individuals and organizations on the activities of the Dialogue San Pedro group and other water-related activities in the San Pedro River Basin.
January 2000
February 2000
March-April 2000
May 2000
June 2000
July-August 2000
October 2000
(Newsletters are in PDF format—you'll need Adobe Acrobat)
2003 Efforts (top)
On Sept. 27, 2002, the first dialogue took place in Cananea, Sonora, as a result of prior planning meetings with ARASA and the Partnership. Members of both watershed organizations attended, as well as other basin stakeholders. Richard Connor of the International Secretariat of the DWC in Delft , The Netherlands, shared his observations from dialogues in other countries. Cecilia Conde, a professor of climatology from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told the audience about climate variability and change in northeastern Sonora and climate provided information useful to municipal water managers, farmers, and ranchers in regional water and climate planning. While some members of the Partnership remained skeptical of the utility of any new climate information because of contacts already established with the army base Ft. Huachua 's weather station, most of the information presented by Professor Conde was new to Mexican members of the audience. Simultaneous translation was available.
On January 10, 2003, the second dialogue took place in Naco, Sonora. The Partnership Technical Committee, ARASA members, municipal planners and water managers from both portions of the basin, Mexican and U.S. federal and state agency representatives with interests in water management, and research scientists who have been working in the basin participated in this dialogue. The purposes of this meeting were to introduce the major watershed stakeholder groups to each other, to initiate a discussion of basin water and climate concerns, and to share research and water management information--with the ultimate goal of improving basin water resource use and management. Again, simultaneous translation was available throughout the session.
The two organizations had agreed that the agenda for this meeting would include 1) brief discussions about the nature and purpose of each organization, 2) research reports on the geohydrology of the basin from scientists working with both organizations, 3) information about the potential use of hydrologic models for management decisionmaking, and 4) a report on a water-quality study of the impacts of mining and urban activity (especially sewage) on the surface waters of the Upper San Pedro River. The two organizations emphasized the importance of promoting long-range, collaborative, community-centered projects to increase basin ecosystem conservation and improve regional quality of life in a manner beneficial to both the environment and human communities.
The January 2003 dialogue concluded with a discussion of potential future projects, specifically 1) scientific investigation necessary for approval by the North American Development Bank of the construction of wastewater treatment plants in Naco and Cananea, Sonora, 2) expansion of the extent of the protected riparian region -specifically to the basin forests and grasslands -by means of public education and awareness programs, 3) a management plan for urban solid waste in the Mexican portion of the basin, and 4) better use of information and tools for integrating climate variability and change into binational water management in the Upper San Pedro Basin.
In July of 2003 the Technical Advisory Committee of the Upper San Pedro Partnership met with ARASA and Mexicana de Cananea mine hydrologists and geologists to discuss the potential exchange of basin data. The USGS wrote a letter to Ing. Isacc Lopez, director of mine operations, requesting permission to do so. Lopez replied that he had to have the permission of the Mexican National Water Commission (CNA). While the Partnership and the Udall Center have been in contact with CAN, this permission has not yet been forthcoming.