11/3/2009 6:55:00 PM Tom O'Halleran returns to Verde River Basin Partnership
Tom O'Halleran
VRBP sets a new course
By Steve Ayers
Staff Reporter
JEROME - The go-it-alone course of the Verde River Basin Partnership continues.
Last week the group sent letters to Arizona's congressional delegation, as well as key federal agencies, requesting they be given promised funding, in spite of the lack of partnership with the Prescott area communities.
On Monday, the partnership took further steps that will include a grassroots campaign to lobby Congress for money as well as educate the general public in the importance of their mission.
Combined with the dissolving of their structure committee, the new course of action demonstrates that the partnership is shifting its efforts from encouraging Prescott area support to concentrating on their primary mission, which is to conduct scientific studies of the Verde River Basin.
Between now and the end of the year, the group will make plans for a grassroots campaign. As discussed on Monday, the campaign will include letter writing, the development of a public speaker's group and plans for public education forums.
"We need to get across to the public, so they can get across to the Congress, that what we are doing is necessary if we are going to effectively manage our water resources," said Jerome representative Jane Moore.
"The scientific work we plan to carry out is not a duplication of previous work and was designed in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, to augment and improve upon what they have already done," she said.
The studies outlined in the partnership's science plan are all designed to better understand the workings of the basin's hydrology and to help fine-tune a soon-to-be-released computer based model of the system.
"Once we have the model we will continually need to update the model. All we are asking is for the ability to manage our water resources based on scientific information," said Tom O'Halleran, newly elected to the VRBP's coordinating committee.
The group has already gathered more than 300 signatures on a form letter, but will be seeking others to write letters of support to congress and convincing them they need to fund the $5.4 million promised for the scientific work.
When created in 2005, the Verde River Basin Partnership was mandated by Congress to gather scientific information on the Verde River Basin, with the intent of using that information to mange the basin's water resources.
The partnership, however, has yet to receive any of the promised funding due to Prescott and Prescott Valley's refusal to join.
Since the VRBP's formation in February 2006, the Prescott area communities have seen the partnership as a organization dedicated to stopping their ability to pump the Big Chino aquifer, a perception the partnership denies.
SEDONA - Since his defeat in the 2008 elections, former state senator Tom O'Halleran has been concentrating much of his time on his personal life.
"I've been taking care of all those things that got put aside, including working out and keeping in shape," O'Halleran says.
But a guy like O'Halleran is not someone who can sit still while the world around him continues to spin. He is the kind of person who is most comfortable when he is at the center of his spinning world.
"You could say I love public policy," he says.
And if there is one component of public policy O'Halleran has had a love for over the years, it is water and its long-term sustainability.
"When I first started getting involved in issues in Arizona, water was the first thing I got involved with. It's always been a passion of mine.
"Bottom line, for myself, my neighbors and my community, is that it's a quality of life issue, it's a question of sustaining property values and, long term, it's a stewardship issue in maintaining one of the two critical resources for life," O'Halleran says.
On Monday, O'Halleran took what can be seen as his first major foray back into the work of public policy, and back into the world of water issues, by being elected to the coordinating committee for the Verde River Basin Partnership.
The coordinating committee acts as the partnership's board of directors. But O'Halleran is most excited about the role he will once again play in a grassroots campaign.
He began his political career in the late 1990s when residents from the Verde Valley began questioning what effect large-scale pumping of the Big Chino aquifer, by the City of Prescott, might have on the flows of the Verde River.
His role eventually led to three terms in the state house of representatives and one in the senate. But he has never forgotten or discounted the power and passion behind public involvement.
"It takes grass root efforts sometimes to get citizens to understand the importance of issues and to take action," he says.
In his new role with the partnership, O'Halleran says he will be attending public events, forming a speakers bureau to speak to community groups and trying to get his friends and his friends' friends to write letters supporting the partnership's plea for promised federal funding.
