mirage in the VALLEY OF THE SUN, the

Environmental History, Jul 2008 by Hirt, Paul, Gustafson, Annie, Larson, Kelli L

ABSTRACT

The Valley of the Sun, a booming metropolitan region of 3.7 million people in a desert that gets seven inches of annual rainfall, has enjoyed an oasis lifestyle during the twentieth century, supported by government-funded reclamation projects and water pumped from aquifers deep underground. Following World War II, groundwater depletion accelerated rapidly, threatening the sustainability of that Sunbelt boom. The state of Arizona, with prodding from the federal government, passed the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980 designed to end groundwater overdraft by 2025. Initially considered a progressive statute, the law has been systematically weakened over the past twenty-five years, increasing water insecurity and delaying necessary conservation and growth control measures.

WALK ACROSS A DESERT VALLEY in the mid-day sun and you may see a familiar mirage: a lake shimmering in the distance. Even though you know surface water in this parched landscape is scarce, you wonder if it might be real, your hopes increasing with the degree of your thirst. Inevitably, you arrive at the location to find nothing wet in sight. On the far horizon, though, another lake glistens through the desert heat. ...'

Current water politics in rapidly growing desert cities of the U.S. Southwest resemble chasing this kind of mirage. Exploding with subdivisions and shopping malls and golf courses, creating artificial oases all around them, these desert cities and their citizens, urban planners, political leaders, real estate developers, and public opinion-molders all see a hopeful vision of water on the horizon, even though the natural landscape they are transforming is unrelentingly dry. Carrying a load of water they managed to acquire over the years, these cities grow into an uncertain future, believing that when they need more of the wet stuff they will find it. They have faith that the shimmer on the distant horizon will be real water, not a mirage. But Sunbelt cities in the arid Southwest increasingly find themselves in the position of the hiker with a half-empty water bottle arriving at the imagined oasis only to find desert.

This most feared scarcity-running dry-has dominated resource politics in the West for the past 150 years and continues to profoundly shape the politics and economics of the region today. Cities with millions of inhabitants now depend on overallocated and vulnerable fresh water supplies. This challenge to sustainability is unprecedented in scope and scale. Never before have water supplies in the arid West been so severely strained with the potential to affect so many people. Arizona is particularly vulnerable, especially its rapidly growing urban areas. Our focus in this essay is the urban region in central Arizona's Sonoran desert dubbed the "Valley of the Sun," a Chamber of Commerce moniker that includes Phoenix and twenty-four adjacent rapidly growing towns and cities spreading inexorably across the desert like ink spilled on porous paper.2 Commonly, people within and beyond the region refer to the whole megalopolis by the name of its capital city: Phoenix. An icon for Sunbelt demographic growth, Arizona held the record for the fastest growing state in 2006, and Phoenix supplanted Philadelphia as the nation's fifth most populous city.3 Every year since 2000, more than 100,000 people have moved to the Valley of the Sun. Three million people called this place home at the start of the new millennium with six million people expected by 2025.4

The iconic saguaro cactus evolved over millennia to adapt to the intense aridity of the Sonoran desert. Cities in the Valley of the Sun, on the other hand, created an oasis of lush green landscapes with a relatively abundant supply of water diverted from four rivers and with ancient water pumped from aquifers beneath the Valley. The deep water in the aquifers beneath Maricopa County accumulated over millions of years. The climatic conditions that filled these aquifers no longer exist, and the geological pace of groundwater recharge is now wholly inadequate to make up for the rapid pumping taking place in recent decades. Arizonans took the water supply bull by the horns over a quarter century ago in a landmark water conservation law, the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, but subsequent loopholes and evasions have gutted its original intent and taken the state off the path toward sustainability. The story is paradigmatic: population growth and economic development strained the local water supply, which led to expensive water importation projects, which supported more development, which led to the need for even more water-a self-perpetuating cycle of unrestrained growth driving a competitive, acquisitive water policy. Virtually every desert city has followed this path. Water supply crises in Arizona's history have punctuated the cycles of growth, with each crisis stimulating institutional reforms aimed at capturing more water or regulating consumption. The greater the crisis, the more significant the reform. But as soon as the fear of running dry passed, commitment to the reforms waned. While the next and most challenging water supply crisis looms in the early twenty-first century, the water elite in Arizona continuously dismantled water consumption restraints established in 1980 while gazing hopefully toward shimmers on the horizon.