just for timzjackline

Topic: W ater D epartm ent: Feature Com m ents: 1

A r iz o n a r e tu r n s to th e d e s e r t

The w orst drought in a century could bring hom e the true costs of grow th

Feature story - From the M arch 21, 2005 issue by M att Jenkins

The grounds of the Central Arizona Project’s headquarters, on the northern edge of Phoenix, have the

spareness of a G eorgia O ’Keeffe painting. The m ain building is finished in faux adobe, and the landscaping is

very m uch in the Southw est-chic, heavy-on-the-cactus style. There isn’t a patch of grass in sight.

But alongside the w alkw ay that leads to the building’s entrance sits w hat looks like a part from an oversized

jet engine: an 8-ton stainless-steel im peller that w as yanked out of one of six giant pum ps on the Colorado

R iver and deposited as a sort of m onum ent outside the CAP’s front doors. It’s the first hint of the big dam -era

braggadocio that w aits inside.

O n the far side of the building runs the CAP canal itself, a pow erful, shim m ering sym bol of the conquest of

the Colorado. The 80-foot-w ide, 25-foot-deep canal carries 1.3 m illion gallons of river w ater per m inute from

the Colorado R iver, 160 m iles aw ay, to Phoenix, and then another 170-som e-odd m iles south to Tucson. It

provides plentiful supplies to fuel the state’s chart-topping urban grow th and serve as a hedge against drought,

and it has becom e the w eapon w ith w hich Arizona has been w aging a sort of riverine Cold W ar.

In his lushly appointed office, the CAP’s general m anager, D avid S. "Sid" W ilson, reclines in a chair and takes

a sw ig of w ater from a bottle w ith a "Central Arizona Project" label on it. H e begins by declaim ing, "I am a

beneficiary of som e long-range foresight on the part of people w ho w ere planning for the future of Arizona."

H is telling of the CAP legend begins w ith the flinty pioneers w ho first began farm ing the Salt R iver Valley in

the 19th century. Then, he m oves into the story of the Salt R iver Project, one of the federal Bureau of

R eclam ation’s first big dam program s, w hich harnessed the Salt and Verde rivers and allow ed Phoenix to gain

a foothold in the desert in the early 1900s. H e relates how California preyed on Arizona’s w ater for nearly half

a century, and em phasizes the story’s trium phant denouem ent in the 1960s, w hen Arizona’s political

heavyw eights w on congressional approval for the CAP, in one of the last great political battles of the dam -

building era.

But there’s a side of this story that Sid W ilson tells w ith less gusto. If the CAP helped the desert bloom , the

current drought m ay take the bloom off the rose. The w ater levels in Lake M ead and Lake Pow ell — the

Colorado R iver’s drought-protection savings accounts — have been dropping since 1999. This w inter’s storm s

have given som e hope that the drought m ay be turning around; snow pack in the Colorado Basin is 111

percent of average for this tim e of year. But even if the drought is easing, recovery is still a long w ay off: The

Bureau of R eclam ation has said that it could take decades of average precipitation to refill Lake Pow ell.

Federal officials have indicated that, if reservoir levels continue to drop, U .S. Secretary of the Interior G ale

N orton could declare a form al shortage on the river as early as 2007, in order to ensure that states w ith

higher-priority rights continue to receive w ater. R epresentatives of the seven Colorado R iver Basin states —

Arizona, California, N evada, Colorado, U tah, W yom ing and N ew M exico — have been m eeting to com e up

w ith a plan by April to reduce w ater use and stave off a form al shortage declaration. The stakes are particularly high for Arizona: The CAP, w hich has the w orst w ater rights on the river, w ould be the first to see

its spigot turned off (H CN , 1/24/05: A crisis brew s on the Colorado).

In the w orld outside W ilson’s office, the Arizona developm ent boom continues. Crew s in stucco-spattered

w ork trucks finish off legions of new hom es in the desert, and bulldozers clear the w ay for tens of thousands

m ore.

But behind the scenes at the CAP and Arizona’s other w ater outfits, the true dim ensions of the w ater shortage

are beginning to com e into focus. The drought could overw helm the state’s fitful efforts to achieve

sustainability, and w ater m anagers are grappling w ith the grow ing realization that, despite a century’s w orth

of efforts to engineer w ater shortages out of existence, nature still bats last.

R iver b rin k sm a n sh ip

If there w as a M oses m om ent on the Colorado R iver, it w as in 1922, w hen the seven basin states parted its

w aters am ong them selves w ith the Colorado R iver Com pact. Arizona, Sid W ilson says, w ound up an

underdog.

"California had the biggest population and the m ost political pow er, and they got the biggest allocation" — 4.4

m illion acre-feet each year. "And then you had Arizona, w ith 2.8 (m illion acre-feet)," says W ilson. (An acre-

foot is approxim ately enough w ater for a fam ily of four for one year.)

The com pact cleared the w ay for the Bureau of R eclam ation to begin building H oover D am and creating Lake

M ead, w hich stored w ater that, at the tim e, w as m ost needed in California. But Arizona refused to ratify the

com pact, and in 1931, the state sued California, claim ing that, in effect, it w as m onopolizing the river’s w ater.

The U .S. Suprem e Court threw out the suit, but Arizona kept up the fight: In 1933, Arizona G ov. Benjam in

M oeur even called out the state’s N ational G uard in an attem pt to stop the construction of Parker D am ,

w here Los Angeles diverts w ater from the river.

Although Arizona’s fightin’ approach didn’t w ork, the next decade brought a grow ing realization in the state

that it needed m ore w ater from the river. In 1944, Arizona finally signed the Colorado R iver Com pact as a

prelude to asking Congress for federal funding to build the CAP, w hich w ould deliver roughly half of Arizona’s

share of the river to farm s and cities in the central part of the state.

But even w ith the com pact signed, it took m ore than tw o decades of politicking and legal fights to convince

Congress to approve the Central Arizona Project. The project, finally started in 1973, w ould eventually require

tw o m ore decades and $4 billion to build.

The CAP signaled Arizona’s com ing-of-age on the river, but it cam e w ith a catch: In the hierarchy of rights to

the river’s w ater, the project sits at the very bottom . (The state’s other 1.3 m illion acre-feet of Colorado R iver

w ater, w hich is prim arily used for agriculture along the river itself, has a som ew hat higher priority.) "In tim es

of shortage," says W ilson, "Arizona could lose every drop of the 1.5 m illion acre-feet of CAP w ater before

California lost the first bucket out of its 4.4 m illion acre-feet."

To guard against that possibility, Arizona has salted aw ay its unused supply of Colorado R iver w ater in

underground "w ater banks." Aquifer recharge projects take w ater out of the CAP canal and spread it into

m an-m ade basins carved out of the desert. From there, the w ater percolates into the aquifers below . Since

1989, the state has deposited about 4 m illion acre-feet of w ater underground.

That has turned the CAP into som ething of a w eapon in Arizona’s long-running fight w ith California. The

w ater banks have kept Arizona’s entitlem ent out of the hands of its neighbor across the river, w hich, from

1953 until 2002, had been siphoning off excess w ater that the other states didn’t use. The banks have also

helped Arizona forge a political alliance w ith N evada, by providing N evada w ith a place to stash som e of its ow n w ater. (Although N evada w ould be cut off after Arizona in a shortage, it has only a 300,000 acre-foot

annual allocation of the river, all of w hich goes to Las Vegas.)

But the w ater-banking tactic hasn’t w on Arizona m any friends am ong the other five Colorado R iver Basin

states. They question w hy, six years into the m ost severe drought in m em ory, Arizona is still taking w ater that

it doesn’t im m ediately need out of the Colorado R iver system — essentially transferring w ater into its ow n

drought savings account w hile draw ing dow n the reservoirs that serve as the collective account for all the

Basin states.

And the banking program hasn’t proven to have the legs that Arizona had hoped. "The problem is, w e had a

plan and w e put together a 30-year program to recharge (ground)w ater," says the M ississippi-born W ilson,

w ho habitually says "drouth" instead of "drought." "W ell, the drouth cam e along after about 10 years."

G ro w in g o n cred it

G rady G am m age Jr. is a prom inent Phoenix attorney w ho left the Central Arizona Project’s board of directors

in January after a 12-year stint. H is law firm occupies the 18th floor of dow ntow n Phoenix’s O ne R enaissance

Square, and as an attorney w hose clients include som e of the city’s large developers, he gives a lot of thought

to grow th and w ater. G am m age is a longtim e believer in the CAP, but he has recently concluded that the

project has given his state a false sense of security.

Before the construction of the CAP, Phoenix and its sister to the south, Tucson, relied m ainly on groundw ater.

In the post-W orld W ar II grow th boom , the tw o cities started pum ping w ater from the ground far faster than

the state’s m eager rain and snow m elt could replace it. By the 1970s, Arizona w as overdrafting its aquifers by

about 2.2 m illion acre-feet a year, and som e areas saw groundw ater levels drop hundreds of feet below the

surface. The state w as m ining the w ater out from under itself, and in som e places on the w est side of Phoenix,

the earth slum ped three feet.

There are m any different versions of w hat happened next; the sim plest is that Cecil Andrus, President Carter’s

secretary of the Interior, refused to ask Congress to fund the CAP unless Arizona prom ised to w ean itself from

m ined, largely nonrenew able groundw ater. Andrus didn’t w ant to feed the state’s addiction; instead, he

w anted to help it find a m ore sustainable diet of surface w ater. By providing an alternative, renew able w ater

supply, the CAP could help stanch the run on the aquifers.

So in 1980, the state Legislature passed the Arizona G roundw ater M anagem ent Act, arguably the m ost

progressive groundw ater-m anagem ent policy in the country. The act required developers to prove they had a

100-year "assured supply" of renew able surface w ater before they could begin building. Phoenix, Tucson and

Prescott w ere designated as "Active M anagem ent Areas" and given a goal of "safe yield" by 2025 — w hen the

am ount of w ater pum ped out of the cities’ aquifers is supposed to be no m ore than is balanced through rain or

artificial recharge. The safe-yield goal w as a basic tenet of w ater sustainability, a sort of hydrologic

equilibrium that balanced use w ith replenishm ent and helped preserve the groundw ater for the future.

"The notion of the act w as that you shouldn’t continue to grow just based on groundw ater — but it w asn’t

that you should never use groundw ater," says G am m age. "I think the concept all along w as that

groundw ater w as an insurance policy; it should only be used in tim es of need."

But that concept has largely been lost, he says. Thanks to w hat am ounts to a loophole in the law , m ore and

m ore new developm ent is being built atop groundw ater.

To accom m odate new housing developm ents in areas w here it w asn’t practical to pipe CAP w ater, the state

Legislature in 1993 created the Central Arizona G roundw ater R eplenishm ent D istrict. D evelopers could build

subdivisions that could only be served by groundw ater, but the hom eow ners w ould have to pay the

groundw ater replenishm ent district to find surface w ater and pum p it back into the aquifers elsew here. W hen the Legislature created the groundw ater replenishm ent district, says Cliff N eal, the district’s m anager,

"The am ount of excess CAP w ater w as far in excess of anybody’s im agination as to w hat the groundw ater

replenishm ent district w ould need. (People thought the district) could just go out and pick up w hatever’s on

the m arket at the tim e."

H ow ever, as Arizona’s population shot skyw ard, he says, "That theory kind of w ent out the w indow ."

The district now has obligations to find substitute w ater for 125,000 houses, prim arily in the Phoenix area.

That’s roughly three tim es as m uch as originally projected, and over the next 10 years, the district itself

anticipates that its obligations could grow to 342,000 new houses.

"It’s staggering," says G am m age. "It’s grow n all out of everybody’s expectations."

Because the district has no authority to deny service to new developm ents, som e observers predict that

enrollm ent could actually clim b to m ore than 500,000 houses in the next decade. And the replenishm ent

district is further overextended because even cities that do have access to river w ater have signed up w ith the

groundw ater district as w ell.

"R ather than build system s to take direct delivery of CAP w ater and treat it, a lot of cities on the W est Side

(w here grow th is happening fastest) decided they’d just join the groundw ater replenishm ent district," says

G am m age. "The result of that is that a lot of the future grow th of Phoenix is going to be using m ined

groundw ater. That’s got everybody thinking, ‘W ell, w ait a m inute: W e had this goal of safe yield, and w e’ve

sort of gutted it by enacting the district.’ "

As a result of the groundw ater replenishm ent loophole, com bined w ith som e continued groundw ater use by

farm s and a drought on the Salt and Verde rivers that started in 1996, groundw ater levels in the Active

M anagem ent Areas are still going dow n, despite the m assive infusion of CAP w ater. In 2002, the m ost recent

year for w hich data are available, the Phoenix Active M anagem ent Area used approxim ately 200,000 m ore

acre-feet of groundw ater than it recharged, and the D epartm ent of W ater R esources has stated that, even

though the rate of the w ater-level’s decline w ill decrease, "all credible projections for the year 2025 indicate

that w e w ill still be in an overdraft situation."

U ntil last year, the district planned to m eet its replenishm ent obligations entirely w ith excess CAP w ater.

H ow ever, the district’s new 10-year plan, com pleted last N ovem ber, acknow ledges that the rules of the gam e

have changed: "It is clear that (the groundw ater replenishm ent district) and other excess CAP w ater custom er

needs far outstrip the estim ated excess CAP w ater supply."

That w as w ithout even considering how the drought — or global w arm ing — m ight reduce the am ount of

w ater available through the CAP.

C h a n gin g rea lities

The legions of new , tile-roofed hom es filling Phoenix and the surrounding Salt R iver Valley are signs of the

record-breaking grow th in the area. M assive expanses of desert are being bladed for new developm ents that

contain thousands of hom es.

The city of Phoenix itself has about 1.4 m illion people. The entire Phoenix m etropolitan area — w hich includes

large suburbs like Tem pe, M esa and Scottsdale — has m ore than doubled in population since 1980, and is now

hom e to about 3.5 m illion people. U ntil recently, new com ers w ere draw n by the area’s low er-than-average

housing prices com pared w ith other cities in the W est. N ow , rapidly increasing hom e values have driven

another spate of hom e buying: As stock m arket returns have lost their luster, an increasing num ber of

speculators have begun investing in Phoenix’s w hite-hot real estate m arket. The grow th is show ing no signs of slow ing dow n. In 2003, the Phoenix m etropolitan area issued around

48,000 perm its for new hom es, a record that m ost observers thought couldn’t be beat. Then, in 2004,

Phoenix prom ptly topped it w ith m ore than 60,000 new -hom e perm its. M iddle-of-the-road projections show

the m etropolitan population reaching 9 m illion by 2030.

Such m atters are of m ore than passing interest to Tom Buschatzke, the city’s w ater adviser, w ho occupies a

w orkaday office in City H all. A 1930s-era hand-colored m ap of the valley and its irrigation districts leans

against the w all behind his desk.

The Phoenix m etropolitan area relies on a m ix of w ater supplies — prim arily from the Central Arizona

Project, the Salt R iver Project, and groundw ater. That, theoretically, gives the area greater flexibility to protect

itself against drought.

"In the short term , w e’re probably in very good shape," says Buschatzke. O ne particularly hopeful sign is the

fact that this w inter’s rains have put a lot m ore w ater in the Salt R iver Project system .

But the long-term outlook m ay not be so good. R ecent studies, including one from the U niversity of Arizona,

indicate that droughts could be m ore frequent, m ore prolonged, m ore severe, and far m ore w idespread than

w as believed even recently (H CN , 1/24/05: W ritten in the R ings).

In the U niversity of Arizona study, says Buschatzke, "O ne of the big things w e tried to find out w as the

probability of sim ultaneous drought on the Salt and Verde rivers and the Colorado R iver. And the prelim inary

results are show ing that the probability is greater than w e originally thought." Buschatzke adds that Phoenix

has traditionally planned for seven- or eight-year droughts, the longest that have occurred on the Salt R iver

Project system in the past century. The U niversity of Arizona study, he says, "is show ing us that 20- to 30-

year droughts can happen."

If the drought becom es deep enough for the Interior D epartm ent to declare a shortage on the Colorado R iver,

"excess" CAP w ater uses — w hatever is being banked, or bought by the groundw ater replenishm ent district —

w ould be cut first. The next big cut w ould hit the irrigation districts that deliver w ater to m ore than 700 farm s

from Phoenix to Tucson.

O nce CAP w as forced to reduce its deliveries by about 500,000 acre-feet — a third of the project’s total

capacity — shortages w ould begin to cut into cities such as Phoenix. Even then, cities could potentially lease

around 275,000 acre-feet of CAP w ater that Indian tribes received in a m assive settlem ent w ith the federal

governm ent last year but are not yet using (H CN , 3/15/04: The N ew W ater Czars). But as the tribes develop,

they’ll have less w ater available to lease. And in a shortage, their share w ould be reduced along w ith the cities’,

so it w ould be a little like looking to a leaking lifeboat for salvation.

Cities could also begin draw ing on w ater banked underground: The City of Phoenix has over 2 m illion acre-

feet of recharged w ater that it can pum p, enough for about six years’ w orth of dem and in the city.

In a w orst-case scenario, Arizona’s carefully guarded aquifers w ould prove their w orth as Phoenix tapped into

"native" groundw ater. The trouble is that Phoenix w ould be just one of m any users in a stam pede on the

state’s aquifers.

For decades, the operative theory behind w ater m anagem ent in Arizona w as that the dem and for w ater

w ould rem ain relatively stable. U rban grow th, the theory w ent, w ould literally take the place of farm s by

developing on top of form er farm land. Initially, farm ers w ould convert from groundw ater to CAP w ater,

thereby preserving — or at least taking the pressure off — groundw ater supplies. Then, as the farm s turned

into houses, those houses w ould continue using CAP w ater.

In reality, how ever, m uch of the new developm ent has taken place on raw desert rather than form er farm land.

"W e used to go from desert to farm land to houses," says G am m age. "N ow , w e go straight from desert to

houses."

Though the num ber of farm s has declined som ew hat, in 2002 — the m ost recent year for w hich data are

available — agriculture w as still responsible for m ore than 40 percent of the total w ater use in the Phoenix

area.

S in k in g m o n ey in to th e w ell

The earliest year that Interior Secretary N orton m ight be forced to declare a shortage is a m atter of som e

debate. Arizona’s w ater agencies have said 2010 or 2011, but the D epartm ent of Interior has hinted that it

could com e as early as 2007.

State and city w ater m anagers m aintain that, if a shortage is declared, it could be 20 years before it affects

cities. N onetheless, m any officials are preparing for the w orst.

Farm ers w ould face cuts as soon as a shortage is declared, and they are already being forced to contem plate a

w holesale return to groundw ater. Farm ers’ w ater rights are "grandfathered" in at levels based on their

m axim um w ater use from 1975-79, a tim e of historically high farm production in the state. And, thanks to

years in w hich they pum ped less groundw ater than their grandfathered levels, farm ers have accum ulated a

m assive num ber of so-called "flex credits" — som ew here in the neighborhood of 10 m illion acre-feet — that

they could use anytim e they w ant.

It is already clear, how ever, that returning to groundw ater w ill be trem endously expensive. G rant W ard is the

general m anager of the Santa Cruz W ater and Pow er D istricts Association. The association represents tw o of

the largest CAP irrigation districts, covering som e 174,000 acres south of Phoenix, w hich prim arily grow

cotton and feed for nearby dairies. W ard says that each of the districts currently has about a quarter of the

w ell capacity it w ould need to fully replace CAP w ater in a shortage. M oving closer to 100 percent w ould

require getting as m any as 300 older w ells in each district back in w orking order.

"These w ells have been sitting here (unused) for years," he says. "Som e w ill take a lot (of w ork)."

The district w ould also need to drill new w ells, w hich could cost $200,000 to $300,000 each. R unning the

pum ps w ill be expensive, too, and it w ill get even m ore so in a drought, says Jim H olw ay, w ho recently left his

assistant director’s position at the Arizona D epartm ent of W ater R esources for a job at Arizona State

U niversity’s International Institute for Sustainability.

"O ne of the reasons that agriculture can afford to pum p groundw ater very econom ically is because they have

low -cost pow er," says H olw ay. "But a lot of that is hydropow er. There’s a double w ham m y: The w ater they’ve

been using, they don’t have, and the cheap energy to get the alternative source isn’t there either, because

there’s no w ater to run through the dam ."

Farm ers in the area have already seen their electricity prices go up by 10 percent per year over the past three

years: D ecreased pow er production from G len Canyon and H oover dam s is forcing them to buy m ore pow er

produced by natural gas-fired pow er plants, even as natural gas prices rise.

U rban residents, too, could see m assive rate hikes, as w ater departm ents are forced to drill m ore w ells to m ake

up for the lost w ater from the Colorado and other rivers.

Says H olw ay: "Som e of the cities are frantically" — he pauses, and then chooses a different w ord — "they’re

actively doing studies to figure out how they get the right infrastructure in place to serve 100 percent groundw ater."

The good new s is that there is apparently no shortage of groundw ater available to tap: The D epartm ent of

W ater R esources estim ates that there is at least 68.3 m illion acre-feet of w ater under the Phoenix area. The

bad new s is that getting to that w ater w ill be neither easy nor cheap.

"H onestly, I’ll tell you this," says Tom Buschatzke: "W e do not have the w ell capacity to m eet (the city’s entire

yearly dem and)." The city, w hose 29 operating w ells currently give it only 15 percent of the w ell capacity it

w ould need, is assessing w hat it w ill take to m eet full dem and. That could m ean drilling as m any as 190 new

w ells, just for the city of Phoenix itself — to say nothing of the surrounding m etropolitan area. And,

Buschatzke says, "the costs (of actually pum ping it) w ould be astronom ical."

Like farm ers, cities w ould face high pow er costs for pum ping. The farther dow n groundw ater is draw n, the

m ore energy it takes to pum p it, and the stam pede w ill only m ake that w orse. But that w ould be just part of

the picture. M uch of the state’s groundw ater has been contam inated by chem icals such as fertilizers from

overlying farm land, and treating it to drinking-w ater standards w ould be expensive as w ell. The city of

Phoenix doesn’t have form al estim ates for potential groundw ater treatm ent costs, but it could be m uch m ore

than the $500 per acre-foot it currently costs to treat CAP w ater. All of that cost w ould com e straight back to

w ater custom ers.

For m em bers of the groundw ater replenishm ent district, w ho are currently draw ing on groundw ater but have

com m itted to paying for replacem ent w ater, the cost is also going to get m ore expensive as supplies get

tighter. H om eow ners w ill probably pay $231 per acre-foot this year, but they w on’t know how m uch they

actually ow e for replenishm ent w ater until the district sends them a bill for w hatever w ater it w as able to buy.

"That’s a problem ," says Cliff N eal. "W e’re trying (to m ake sure) that w hen a hom eow ner m oves into a

(groundw ater replenishm ent district) plan, they understand their costs for replenishm ent could be pretty high

in the future. The developer has to declare that they are m em bers of the district, (but) you’ve got a ton of

papers to sign as a new hom e buyer, and you don’t read everything that’s in front of you."

N eal says the district estim ates that the average cost of replenishm ent w ater w ill be around $500 per acre-

foot in 2025, but drought and increasing com petition for w ater could send that cost even higher. Added

together, the price of drought could be staggering in a state that is already $1.65 billion in debt for the CAP

over the next 40 years.

A sh es to a sh es?

This w inter’s storm s m ay postpone the possibility of shortage for one m ore year, but an accurate outlook

w on’t be available until April. And even though this drought w ill eventually end, another one w ill never be far

off. N o m atter how good the w eather, Arizona w ill alw ays be the first state on the river to lose its w ater.

All this has left the CAP’s Sid W ilson thinking w istfully of a grandiose piece of the Central Arizona Project deal

that never cam e to be. "(Arizona’s low priority) w as a political deal. That w as the price of getting CAP," he

says. "But at the tim e w e got it, there w as also a federal prom ise to augm ent the flow s of the river by 2.5

m illion acre-feet."

"Augm enting" is shorthand for w hat likely w ould have been the biggest w ater-developm ent project the U .S.

had ever seen: It w ould have taken w ater from the Colum bia R iver in the Pacific N orthw est and pum ped it

halfw ay across the W est to add to the Colorado R iver. It w as, quite literally, a pipe dream , yet it hasn’t been

forgotten in the offices of the Central Arizona Project. W ilson holds onto it like a w ild card, hoping that it w ill

at least give his state a better position at the bargaining table as the Colorado R iver Basin states scram ble for a

collective solution: "W hat w e’re saying is, ‘W e had to accept a junior priority, but w e also had a prom ise of

augm entation, and that never happened.’ " Talks betw een representatives of the seven states continue in an effort to com e up w ith a shortage-sharing

plan to deliver to the secretary of the Interior by April. N ow , to keep the CAP dom ino-effect from reaching the

cities, Arizona m ay seek a kind of post-Cold W ar détente and ask the other states to help share the pain.

"In term s of planning shortages," says W ilson, Arizona could propose that som e of its farm ers take less w ater

as a w ay to keep m ore w ater in Lakes M ead and Pow ell and delay triggering an official shortage. "But in

return, (w e’d like to figure) out a w ay to proportionalize the cut w hen the shortages get deep and go into our

(urban) uses. W e’d like to see som e sharing of im pacts w ith California and N evada."

The drought has done m ore than anything else to m ake w ater m anagers realize that it’s im possible to ever

engineer an escape from the hydrologic cycle. Every new house is an added liability in the next drought, and

Arizona’s phenom enal grow th raises the stakes w ith each passing year.

Sitting at a polished conference-room table in his office high above dow ntow n, G rady G am m age, the

attorney, has begun to see the lim its: "Arizona has alw ays felt insecure about its im age as a place that w as so

dry, people couldn’t live here." In response, he says, w ater m anagers have m ade heroic efforts to ensure that

there w as alw ays enough w ater for the boom to continue.

G am m age took on the topic of grow th and drought in a 1999 book called Phoenix in Perspective: R eflections

on D eveloping the D esert. "The standard equation people do on Phoenix says that w e have enough w ater

supply for 10 to 15 m illion people here," he says. "I said, ‘I think that’s a bad idea. I think w e should try to use

w hatever m anagem ent tools w e have to flatten the horizon of a place like Phoenix at som ething like 5 to 7

m illion.’

"I w as resoundingly hooted dow n as a nut. But 7 m illion people is tw ice w hat w e have now , and at least then

w e w ouldn’t be living totally on the ragged edge of w hat w e can sustain here."

G am m age pauses.

"Phoenix is a place, like m uch of the W est, that has been built on population grow th as the goal. All of our tax

structures, all of our infrastructure, everything … our identity is w rapped up in being first, second or third," he

says. "If Atlanta" — the top new -hom e m arket in the nation — "is ahead of us, w e’re pissed off. If Las Vegas

beats us in som ething, w e’re w orried.

"And I think it’s tim e w e got over that."

M att Jenkins is H C N associate editor.

C O N T A C T :

U .S. B ureau of R eclam ation (Low er Colorado R egion) 702-293-8000, w w w .usbr.gov/lc/region/

A rizona D epartm ent of W ater R esources 602-417-2400, w w w .w ater.az.gov

C entral A rizona P roject 623-869-2333, w w w .cap-az.com

C entral A rizona G roundw ater R eplenishm ent D istrict 623-869-2380, w w w .cagrd.com It seem s to m e the w estern states, like others, have to face the facts, use less w ater, m ore solar to augm ent

dam pow er, and raise w ater and electrical use taxes a lot to force conservation. Take a page from the native

Indians, they only took w hat w as needed. I don't think w e have defined our needs, w e are excessive at

everything w e do as Am ericans and not very good stew ards of our environm ent!

H ig h C o u n tr y N e w s in y o u r in b o x !

First Nam e Last Nam e

Em ail Address Go

S ig n u p n o w to re ce iv e o u r w e e k ly e m a il n e w sle tte r!

• The best w eekly collection of W estern environm ental new s

• An at-a-glance look at our latest new s and analysis

W hy does this box keep popping up?