mirage in the VALLEY OF THE SUN, the

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

POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE VALLEY OF THE SUN

BESIDES BIOPHYSICAL FACTORS, sociopolitical conditions in Arizona and the West have shaped options and outcomes. A libertarian, acquisitive, pro-property rights, antiregulation ethic predominates in the region's political culture. Even though people may value sacrifice and communitarian ethics in their families, religious and civic organizations, and even offices and classrooms, in western politics those same people usually favor weak state and municipal controls over the economic landscape. More specifically, and just as ironically, westerners favor aggressive state involvement in capturing and delivering water resources for economic development, but prefer private ownership of the wet stuff and laissezfaire policies regarding its consumption.22 Over time this has led to a sense of entitlement, resistance to regulatory restrictions, and profligate water consumption as government subsidies disguise the true cost of delivering clean water to users. In fact, for homeowners in the Valley of the Sun, a ton of delivered dirt is twenty times more expensive than a ton of delivered potable water.23

When water supplies run short, governing institutions have sought to augment the supply through importation, technological innovation, or the purchasing of water rights from elsewhere. Augmentation, however, is just the practice of moving water from one place to another-taking it out of rivers and delivering it to farms and cities, collecting it from one basin and sending it to another, pumping it from underground aquifers and using it on the surface. The absolute supply of water is never really augmented in any significant way; more is made available in certain places, with less available in others. As such, the quest to "augment" water supplies in arid regions is an effort to move water from places of little political or economic consequence to places with political and economic clout. It is an act of power in which one group's gain is another's loss. Los Angeles's heist of Owens Valley's water (portrayed in the film "Chinatown") is the iconic tale of this imperialist relationship.24

Conservation, or demand reduction, has become an important alternative to augmentation in the United States and beyond, especially since the 1970s, but volunteerism and regulatory timidity have made conservation programs in central Arizona little more than window dressing. Preferred responses to water scarcity in the West in general and Phoenix in particular rarely involve significant behavioral changes or mandatory restrictions in consumption. Private ownership of water and irrational water pricing support this laissez-faire condition, posing significant obstacles to balancing water consumption with water supply. The problem is no longer hypothetical. According to a 2003 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation report, central Arizona may face a water supply crisis as early as 2025. Nor is it just a Phoenix problem: "The social, economic, and environmental consequences of water supply crises are no longer local or regional issues," the Bureau report continues, "these crises now affect economies and resources of national importance."25