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Middle
San Pedro
The Middle San Pedro watershed is a
northwest-southeast trending basin in Cochise and Pima Counties in
southeastern Arizona.
The watershed includes parts of two
ground-water basins designated by the Arizona Department of Water
Resources: the southern part of the Lower San Pedro Basin and the
northern part of the Upper San Pedro Basin.
Benson is the largest city in the
watershed and had a population of about 4,900 in 2005. The population
of the watershed has grown moderately by a factor of about 1.5 during
the past 20 years (ADWR, 2005; U.S. Census Bureau, 2006), but it is
expected to rapidly increase during the next 20 years as residential
developments are constructed for retirement communities or for
satellite communities of nearby Tucson.
If the approved and planned
developments are constructed as scheduled, the population of Benson is
expected to increase to more than 50,000 by 2025.
Groundwater is the primary source of
water and is essential to support a growing population, agriculture,
industry, and the riparian habitat of the San Pedro River.
The city of Benson, Cochise County,
the public, and other interested parties are concerned about the
future availability and sustainability of the water supply.
Increased groundwater pumping could
have several undesirable consequences, such as (1) loss of available
ground-water storage, (2) increased cost of pumping, (3) need for
deepening existing wells, (4) need for new wells, (5) decreased
quality of drinking water, (6) land subsidence, and (7) damage to the
riparian habitat of the San Pedro River. To be effective and
acceptable to all interested parties, planning and management of the
ground-water supply needs to be guided by an objective and
comprehensive scientific understanding of the ground-water system.
In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS) began an investigation of the hydrogeology of the middle San
Pedro watershed in cooperation with ADWR. This project is part of the
Rural Watershed Initiative (RWI), which is a program established by
the State of Arizona and managed by the ADWR.
The primary objective of this
project is to improve the understanding of the hydrogeology of the
middle San Pedro watershed.
-- Courtesy of the U.S.
Geological Survey
External Links Outside of the
ADWR Network
This Icon represents a link out of the ADWR web site. We are not
responsible for content out of our control.
Community Watershed Alliance of the Middle San Pedro Valley
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