The 180-mile long Santa Cruz River, which begins in the San Rafael Valley of Southern Arizona, dips across the border into México, turns back north, carves through Tubac, Tucson, past Marana and then trickles out as it approaches the Gila River south of Phoenix, is once again in danger of disappearing.
For 12,000 years, people have relied on its waters and the plants and animals those waters draw and feed.
Now, American Rivers, a nonprofit environmental organization, has declared the Santa Cruz one of the most endangered rivers in the United States. The designation comes as part of a new report, released today, “America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2024: A Call to Action for Clean Water.”
“All water is connected,” said Tom Kiernan, president and CEO of American Rivers. Explaining that the designation of America’s most endangered rivers is a “national call to action,” Kiernan said in a press release that we must all “defend the streams and rivers on which all life depends.”
American Rivers and environmental organizations from Southern Arizona are seeking federal protection of the Santa Cruz. They want the river to be designated an urban wildlife refuge under protection from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Running dry
After settlers increasingly began moving into Arizona in the 1800s, they sucked Arizona’s few rivers and aquifers nearly dry. By 1913, the Santa Cruz no longer perennially ran, and most seasonal flows had stopped by the 1940s.
But the river wasn’t only mostly dried, newcomers began dumping wastewater into it as well. Not until 2008, when wastewater began being more extensively treated and pumped into the river, did the Santa Cruz begin its recovery.
Today, “wastewater facilities now provide approximately 35 miles of perennial flows — improved water quality, and native fish, birds, reptiles, vegetation, and people are all returning to the river,” according to the report.
But as the river’s sporadic flow is dependent on effluent, or treated wastewater, that water itself — sourced from the similarly endangered Colorado — is under threat.
“As those water supplies dwindle due to climate change and overuse, so could flows in the Santa Cruz,” according to the report. “Longer droughts, rising temperatures, and intense competition for water threaten limited supplies.”
“In the last few years, we’ve seen rollbacks of the Clean Water Act,” said Kimberly Baeza, from the Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department, in a press release accompanying the report. That’s why Baeza is pushing for federal protection of the Santa Cruz.
Other rivers
Each year, the country’s most endangered rivers are selected by American Rivers based on three factors:
- A major decision that the public can help influence in the coming year on the proposed action
- The significance of the river to people and nature.
- The magnitude of threat to the river and its communities, especially in light of climate change and racial injustice.
According to a 2022 report from the Environmental Integrity Project, over half of the nation’s rivers are impaired by pollution — 47% of the rivers studied were too polluted for safe consumption of fish, and 38% of them were not safe for swimming.
From Alaska to the Carolinas, this year there are 10 endangered waterways, as selected by American Rivers. In addition to the Santa Cruz, the report names New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande and the Gila River as in urgent need of protection.
The future of the Santa Cruz
The Sonoran Institute and the Wilderness Society have been working together to urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to establish a Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge.
Such a refuge would, according to the report, “establish parcels which will be put into permanent federal protection, create an acquisition boundary — within which future parcels can be purchased and likewise protected — and would bring much-needed national attention to this ecologically and culturally significant waterway.”
As climate change continues to bear down, as Southern Arizona and northern Sonora continue to bake under rising temperatures and extended droughts, residents seek to protect the lifeline of the Santa Cruz.
“It is basically a love of nature that we find every time we come down to the Santa Cruz River,” said Ben Lomeli, president of Friends of the Santa Cruz River.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
