RAINBOW LAKE
Conservation Company, Inc
Conserving Arizona's Water
1903 to 2022
How lucky are those of us who can spend leisure time here at the only residential alpine lake in Arizona? Arizona Game & Fish Commission has designated Rainbow Lake a state sport fishery, stocked frequently with native species for the benefit of the public and residents. It is a boating paradise with strict low motor speed limits for the benefit of kayakers and paddleboarders. And whether it is dawn or dusk, summer or winter, the photography opportunities are amazing!
Rainbow Lake was created as an irrigation reservoir before the turn of the twentieth century by the founders of Show Low/Pinetop Woodland Irrigation Company which owns the water and most of the lake bottom. Irrigation ditches and pipes have served farms and stockmen whose properties straddle White Mountain Blvd, northwest to U-Haul, up the Rim west of White Mountain Blvd to Summit Hospital and then to the Ellsworth Ranch below Show Low Lake. Rainbow Lake Dam was built in 1903, and the headgate that controls flow out of the dam was installed in 1911, before Arizona became a state.
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Over the next 100 years, as Show Low, Lakeside, and Pinetop grew, much of the shoreline of Rainbow Lake was developed and Rainbow Lake became the only lake in Arizona with lake frontage lots. There are single family residences, attached homes, small inns, rental cabins, and an area owned by AZG&F for parking, boat launching and fishing.
Residents and friends of Rainbow Lake started recognizing signs that the Rainbow irrigation infrastructure was deteriorating as much as twenty years ago. A group of those folks formed a study group of interested people, state and county agencies, the Town of Pinetop-Lakeside, and others. Known as the Rainbow Lake Coalition, it successfully solved a serious vegetation and weed infestation problem by raising money to introduce sterile white amur carp to the Lake. The carp have virtually cleaned the lake bottom, so no more fouled propellers!
2022 was a turning point for Rainbow Lake. Some areas of the Lake were so low, the shoreline was a silted beach. We learned that the headgate on the Dam could not be fully closed, causing excessive water loss. Since the late 1990s, the Irrigation Company had been involved in federal litigation with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Nation over water rights to the Little Colorado watershed, of which the creeks and springs in Pinetop and Lakeside that feed Woodland Lake, Scotts Reservoir, Rainbow Lake, and Show Low Lake make up the Southeast range. The expense of decades of litigation had drained the Company’s resources such that long-overdue maintenance had been “deferred” (read, “non-existent”).
To the Irrigation Company, the lake has value as a reservoir to hold and distribute water for farms and cattle ranches. Its income from water shares is minimal and they receive no governmental assistance. For a variety of reasons, the Company has been suspicious of offers of financial assistance from residents or interests. The Coalition members, who want to develop Rainbow Lake for its recreational ambiance and natural beauty, have no legal rights to it and have no statutory rights to force the Company to maintain or repair the Lake infrastructure. In the past, Coalition members have maintained their own set of suspicions of what the Company would do with any financial assistance, since the Company’s main creditor was their litigation lawyer.
As of July 2022, the Coalition and its longtime executive director, David Newlin, had seemingly exhausted its efforts to set up a meeting with Company officials. The Town of Pinetop-Lakeside was poised to collaborate with the Company and the Coalition but wanted to rely on the Coalition to take the first step. It was then that the Coalition identified a workable path to breaking down the communication barriers.