mirage in the VALLEY OF THE SUN, the

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

Groundwater depletion clearly needed to be addressed more conscientiously, but until 1980, water politics in the region focused solely on augmentation rather than reducing consumption. The annual overdraft for the Phoenix region in 1980 was 1.3 million acre-feet, enough water to supply about 2 million households in the Valley. Forty percent of the water consumed in the same year was unsustainable "mined groundwater." In some areas of central Arizona, the water table had dropped as much as four hundred feet.46

CRISIS, REFORM, AND RESISTANCE

BY THE 1970s, with federal budget deficits skyrocketing from the Vietnam War and social welfare programs, competition for federal dollars grew fierce. Beginning with President Richard Nixon and continuing with presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, massive federal water projects met increasingly harsh scrutiny from the Office of Management and Budget. President Carter, trained as an engineer, had clashed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over an environmentally destructive water project in Georgia while he was governor. This experience imbued him with a skeptical eye toward federal water development and a reformer's impulse upon entering the White House in 1977. Announcing that he would address both economic waste and environmental damage in one stroke, President Carter made a list of ten water projects he considered boondoggles and for which he wanted federal funding canceled. To the horror of Arizona's water boosters (and to the delight of Arizona environmentalists), the CAP was on President Carter's "Hit List."47 Not surprisingly, the western states' congressional delegations rose up in a bipartisan regional revolt against Carter's Hit List and eventually gutted most of it. As the most expensive project on the list, though, the CAP remained threatened for several more years. It was about half finished and Phoenix area boosters could almost taste the water. Because the project was far too expensive for the state to fund on its own, the Arizona congressional delegation pulled out all stops to revive CAP funding. But the state's unresolved groundwater overdraft problems hampered its efforts to get federal assistance.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the Arizona legislature created a Groundwater Management Study Commission in 1977 to work on a serious groundwater code. The process dragged on inconclusively for two years, until Carter's Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus informed then Governor Bruce Babbitt that Arizona had to pass a comprehensive groundwater management code designed to put the state on a path to sustainability before Carter would support funding of the CAP. At stake was 1.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water, slightly more than the amount of groundwater overdraft in the Valley at that time, so CAP appeared to be the solution to aquifer depletion. In response to Secretary Andrus's threat, Arizona politicians acted quickly. Babbitt formed a "rump group" to negotiate a bill that would appease Andrus. "In one sense, this process does not speak well of democracy," wrote Baltimore lawyer Desmond D. Connall, Jr. "This issue was too controversial for the legislature," he continued, "and thus was left to three interest groups [mining, municipal, and agricultural], each represented by its 'hired guns.' The image of the proverbial smoke filled room comes to mind. ... However, without secret negotiations limited to the three principal interests, most doubt that there would have been a bill." The bill for the Arizona GMA was delivered to the state legislature and passed by both houses in one hour and fifteen minutes "with minimum debate and no amendments" on June 11, 1980.48 On June 12, 1980, Babbitt signed the GMA into law.49 Attorney Tom Galbraith opined that the real impetus for the GMA was far removed from environmental concern or hydrological benevolence for the state's deteriorating aquifers. "The state's political leadership summoned this group," he wrote, "not because reform of the state's antiquated groundwater law was overdue, but to solve a funding problem."50