• The Tucson Citizen (1/21):
  • The state's big cities are weathering the drought through multiple water sources, but the drought's effects in rural Arizona have stretched border to border.
  • Rural areas are being forced to drain lakes and tap depleted wells.
    • Flagstaff imposed mandatory conservation measures in May.
    • The community of Navajo Mountain shut down a boarding school in July when water ran out.
    • Mayer barely kept its school open when a well failed in August.
    • The surface water sources for Williams were stretched thin.
  • The Navajo Nation has been especially hard hit. Wells and basins began to dry up in last spring, leaving sheep and cattle with no water. Years of no rain and overgrazing stripped the land of food, and by early summer, tribal officials encouraged livestock owners to sell their animals or move them off the reservation.
  • Farmers and ranchers from Seligman to Safford found themselves forced to give up grazing lands early in the summer. When faced with the choice of buying feed for the cattle or selling the animals at a loss, most went to auction.
  • The Tohono O'odham Nation declared a drought emergency in May after livestock began dying from lack of food and water. Many tribal members lost nearly everything they owned.

• The Arizona Republic (1/26):
  • The drought in Arizona "is a crisis."
  • Heavily populated areas such as greater Phoenix have sufficient water. Concerns about drought barely register in these areas.
  • But in less-populated regions, particularly northern Arizona, the impact of four years of drought is severe.
  • Five reservoirs in Williams are at 6 percent of capacity. Two are dry.
  • Mandatory water restrictions in Flagstaff are in effect.
  • Wells and basins on the Navajo Nation are drying up, and ranchers are advised to sell their livestock.
  • Many towns began trucking in water last summer.

• The New York Times (1/27):
  • A persistent drought in rural Arizona and large parts of most other Western states is bearing down on Arizona's largest population centers, Phoenix and Tucson. ... They are facing hard decisions about water use as the state confronts the drought's long-term effects on farms and forests, including dwindling crops, a growing threat of devastating wildfires and a worrisome infestation of tree-killing beetles.
  • This month, Salt River Project, the company whose dams and reservoirs provide the Phoenix metropolitan area about 75 percent of its water, announced that it was cutting deliveries by a third. This was the first time since 1951 that Salt River, a 100-year-old company, had rationed water. Several reservoirs have fallen so low that Indian ruins, some estimated to be 800 years old, have been exposed for only the third time in a century. Weather forecasters do not expect them to be submerged soon.
  • In Tucson, where the main water source is the Colorado River, city officials are storing river water in wells for drier times. Smaller cities are also doing so.
  • In Arizona, the drought has done the most damage in sparsely populated areas that have no access to the Salt River Project reservoirs or to water from the Colorado River, which is shared by seven states and Mexico. These outlying areas of forests, farms and ranches rely on surface water and groundwater, which are slowly drying up. For several years, farmers have planted less and ranchers have sold livestock to avoid rising feed costs and having to watch animals die of dehydration.
  • "The high country has been devastated by a lack of water," said Joe Sigg, chief state lobbyist for the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation.

Reference:

Ni, F., T. Cavazos, M. K. Hughes, A. C. Comrie, and G. Funkhouser, 2002. "Cool-season precipitation in the southwestern USA since AD 1000: comparison of linear and nonlinear techniques for reconstruction." International Journal of Climatology, 22 (13), 1645 - 1662.

For data, see: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ni2002/ni2002.html, Arizona Division 2.