Christina McVie
Tucson, Arizona
Christina retired as a registered nurse in the 1990s and started a new career in environmental activism. For over 20 years, she has defended the Santa Cruz international watershed by strengthening local water policies to serve the watershed and the people most affected by contamination. Her success can be attributed to her steadfast commitment to her watershed and her remarkable ability to mobilize the people and communities.
Christina will be honored as a River Hero at River Rally 2022.
This interview was recorded on March 13, 2022.
Your journey to water work is very non-traditional! Tell me how you came into your current role as an advocate for Arizona waters?
I came to this work later in life. I have worked in a number of different areas over the years, including property management, theater, and healthcare. In the 1980s, as an ER and ICU nurse, I encountered a number of patients who lived in my neighborhood where there was TCE contamination from government facilities. I started buying bottled water as soon as I became aware of the issue. Unfortunately, in the under-served neighborhood in which I lived, a lot of people couldn’t afford bottled water. I saw clusters of cancer cases and other illnesses. Clean water is a public health and safety issue.
Fast forward to my moving to the opposite side of the valley and retiring. My friends’ kids in the Northwest portion of Tucson were adversely affected because roadway infrastructure was not concurrent with development in Pima County. Our area had a F rating in terms of federal highway funds. So, my husband, Doug, and I became involved with local land use planning efforts. A state-mandated comprehensive land use planning effort kicked off in 1992 and we were aghast at some of the projections from municipalities in the county. Living in a beautiful area of the old-growth Saguaro-Ironwood Forest, we were disturbed to find out that some people’s vision of the area was similar to south-central L.A. So, we became more involved in our local community and later discovered almost serendipitously that our backyard was ground zero for the then federally endangered Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy-owl.
In the late 1990’s, in an effort to protect the owls, Doug and I became involved with locating the Northwest campus of Pima Community College. We were thrown together with some outstanding expert biologists who gave us a stack of textbooks to read. Apparently we passed the test because they decided that we were worth educating. It was a process, with careful consideration of the Pygmy-owl and other species. At the same time, Pima County moved forward with the development of its multi-species conservation plan (MSCP) under the Endangered Species Act. After 20 years of stakeholder involvement and planning, Pima County and the US Fish and Wildlife Service finally signed our 30-year incidental take permit in October of 2016. Along with other members of our community, I was very involved with the development of the plan.
When did water work come into your story?
One of the things we recognized right off was that water was our limiting factor. We didn’t really address it in the initial planning process because we were focused so specifically on vulnerable species and habitat conservation. The primary water provider in Pima County, Tucson Water, is very proud of the fact that we now use less water with a few hundred thousand more people than we did in the 1980s. And that’s very true. We’ve also been extremely far-sighted in establishing rainwater harvesting ordinances (which, to date, we have failed to adequately implement and monitor). There’s been great work in requiring low flow toilets in new development and things of that nature, but we really have not addressed underserved communities from an environmental justice or equity perspective. Nor have we addressed our finite water supply. We pay exorbitant amounts of money to bring water in from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal and we store it underground. According to Tucson Water, the latest estimates indicate that we have approximately 40 years worth of water banked in the ground. Meanwhile, state law requires an assured 100-year water supply for permitting new development in our region, which we simply don’t have. Some of the powers that be seem to think there are no limits to growth. That’s a problem.
The weakest link in Pima County’s award-winning 30-year MSCP permit is the conservation in perpetuity of riparian habitat, which over 90% of the species in the southwest rely on at some point in their life cycle. It’s a very big deal in arid landscapes – assuming we want to eat and drink and coexist on this planet. Riparian ecosystems really need our support. We can’t just preserve what is left of our systems, we have to take a watershed approach and enhance and restore them. I didn’t start out as an environmentalist or an activist. I’m a perennial student. Basically, I do homework. I like research and people have been kind enough to take me under their wing and point me in the right direction.
So many people would look at the issues facing their community and not get involved to the extent that you have. What drove you to this level of involvement?
I’m a big-picture person and I like to work on big-picture issues. Teamwork is essential. No person is an island and no person can do this work alone. I am blessed to live in a community that is engaged. I work with some wonderful people. And I was very fortunate that some of those people had some confidence in me and, not only did they educate me, but they confided in me and understood that I would keep their confidence and hold it sacred. As such, I’ve received a tremendous amount of guidance. A lot of people are very nervous about talking to people from their silos of politics or agency work, but building community and building trust is the first, most important ingredient. We learned that the hard way with our conservation planning process. In fact the US Fish and Wildlife Service made a film about our process as a teaching tool for others.
Who inspired you to take up the mantle and get involved in the conservation plan?
I was very fortunate to have wonderful in-laws, for too short a time. I lost my dad when I was 30 and my father-in-law was a remarkable individual. We were just chatting and getting to know each other when he asked if I had any charities that I was involved with. I told him that I donated to support the elephants in Africa and the Environmental Defense Fund since I’d become a member in the early 80s. I grew up with a great love of nature, thanks to my Dad and his parents. My father-in-law said that was wonderful and, as we talked, he said that he liked to focus on his own backyard, before taking on the world. He wanted to do everything he could to improve his community and said that he would branch out once that was done. Now I look back and laugh because he was so kind and gentle and wise. I’m still working on my backyard!
Will you ever feel like the work is done?
It’s never done. You take one step forward and you might take a step or two back. It’s constant and I’ll never be done with my own backyard, but it’s my job to try to make it a little bit better and I do think that we, as a community, have achieved that. I think it’s about understanding your place in your landscape and all the history that goes along with that, then working together to honor that and make it better.
