Arizona Reaches Watershed in Cleanup of ‘Dirty Verde’

People used to call it the Dirty Verde.

Some years back, the Verde--Spanish for green --River in central Arizona was a drainage basin for all kinds of debris, from copper mine tailings to everyday garbage.

No longer. Spurred by environmentalists, Arizonans have awakened to the urgency to preserve and protect one of the few free-flowing rivers in their parched desert state.

Dams, diversions and development in this increasingly populous land have dried up almost 90% of Arizona’s major desert streams.

Today, the Verde is a clean, multipurpose river, its valley a green ribbon curling 125 miles from the headwaters at Sullivan Lake near Paulden to the confluence with the Salt River north of Phoenix.

“It has the complete cornucopia of all those environmental ingredients that have all but disappeared in other Sonoran Desert ecosystems,” says John R. Parsons of Cottonwood, a leader in the battle to save the Verde.

“It’s a complicated river,” says Dennis W. Sundie, a program manager for the Arizona Department of Water Resources. “It has a little bit of everything.”

The Verde flows through four counties, two national forests, nearly 20 communities and four American Indian tribal lands. Farmers, ranchers and loggers are among the principal residents of its watershed.

In its upper reaches dwell threatened and endangered species: bald eagles, peregrine falcons and spikedaces, a type of fish. Near Cottonwood is the six-mile Verde River Greenway, one of the finest remaining riparian strips of cottonwoods and willows in the United States. Toward the lower end is a 39.5-mile stretch of federally designated wild and scenic river, the only such segment in Arizona.

But the Verde still has problems. American Rivers, a conservation organization headquartered in Washington, lists it as one of 15 threatened U.S. rivers--just above the 10 worst, which are listed as endangered.

The Verde is threatened by proposed upstream residential developments and additional ground water withdrawals that could decrease its water flow and increase pollution.

“This is a classic example of the type of insidious degradation that occurs on desert rivers in the Southwest that are not actively managed,” according to the American Rivers evaluation. “It is often too late to stop it by the time it becomes apparent.”

“It’s kind of a microcosm of the water problems in the rest of the country,” says John L. Keane, executive water-policy analyst for the Salt River Project, the giant, Phoenix-based utility that supplies water and electricity to millions of Arizonans.

The middle 60 miles of the Verde Valley constitute the most troubling segment. Much of the land is privately owned. The basin’s population nearly doubled--to almost 32,000--between 1980 and 1990 as urbanization encroached on an area that once was chiefly rural.

Varied interests--public, private, local, state and federal--have rallied behind the Verde. “It’s not too late,” Sundie tells National Geographic.

Representatives of these interests met this month in Prescott, a bustling upstream community, to create the Verde Watershed Assn. Its goal is to “ensure sufficient flows in the Verde River to maintain a healthy ecosystem.”

Organizers will soon prepare an inventory of the Verde basin and its problems, preliminary to a management plan.

“Everybody’s in agreement on what to do,” says Gail A. Peters, Arizona director of American Rivers and a leader of the Arizona Rivers Coalition. “I’m amazed that we’ve gotten as far as we have.”

Tanna Thornburg, chief of resource stewardship for Arizona State Parks, adds: “The potential for conflict is right there at the surface. But the way it’s been handled has greatly reduced the potential.”

As recently as the 1980s, violence erupted in the valley during a dispute between environmentalists and sand-and-gravel operators. The operators eventually lost in court, and little dredging now goes on.

But before it was over, one man had been shot and activists such as John Parsons had received anonymous death threats. Now he shrugs it off: “It was your typical violent phase of an environmental action.”

Tempers have cooled. People such as Andy Groseta, president of the Cottonwood Ditch Assn., argue for balance between conservation and development. “We need to protect what’s there,” he says. “But we can’t be anti-growth. There needs to be a little of both.”

Groseta, whose family has ranched in the Verde Valley for three generations and tapped the river for irrigation, says: “Agriculture developed the West. A lot of people want to shut everything down. But good conservation practices by farmers and ranchers have kept the Verde clean.”

Mike Mulcaire of Cornville, a heavy-construction contractor and former dredger, also has deep roots in the valley. “Stopping the dredging was, in essence, morally right,” he concedes. “But the cleanup has not been done just by environmentalists.”

Mulcaire reflects the anti-government strain that runs through Western land and water disputes. “My quarrel is that if people want to sell land to state parks, that’s their right,” he says. “But the state has no right to take it without compensating them for it.”

Dick Thompson, chairman of the Verde Natural Resource Conservation District and former mayor of Clarkdale, is a driving force behind the Verde Watershed Assn. “If we don’t solve the problem, it will be solved for us,” he says.

“In cases like this, outside involvement is necessary. The people who have been here for a long time don’t realize the resource they have and don’t realize the extent to which it’s threatened. Some of them never will.”