Fresh Thinking on Water, Land Use Vital to Our Region

Our view: 2007 will be known as year we started to act like we live in a desert

When historians look back on 2007, there’s a good chance they’ll see it as the year we finally started to act like we live in a desert.

Not only will they find that local politicians and residents accepted that deserts are very dry, but the public realized – suddenly, it seems – that survival of future generations required action.

As we move into the new year, the monumental task before our community is to face the need for addressing water management and regional land use without becoming overwhelmed by the task and yielding to death by a thousand pieces.

The issues plaguing the Tucson metropolitan area, a region that has grown rapidly and with little planning and regulation, have typically been complicated by politics, greed and arrogance, but that has finally started to change. Prior to 2007, the need for a shift in thinking about water was well known, but the will to change was absent.

The way our politicians and bureaucrats manage water – and that means getting it here and using it wisely – will determine what the metro region looks like roughly 40 years from now when our population is projected to reach 2 million.

Today, even though water law and water policy tend to be impenetrably complex topics for most people, more residents at least understand that controlling growth and water use are crucial to our future.

Last March, the economic blueprint prepared by Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc., or TREO, reflected a widespread concern with sprawl. After interviewing some 6,000 people, it was clear that “one of the most critical issues for people is growth management, and water is an essential component of that,” said Larry Hecker, chairman of the steering committee that prepared the report.

Two months after the TREO blueprint was issued, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, a local business organization, advanced the discussion about sprawl and related issues by drawing diverse factions into a regional town hall. The event launched a discussion about what ails the metropolitan area and heightened public awareness about several issues including water.

That discussion gained considerable momentum during the summer when former lawmaker John Kromko hatched Proposition 200, a ballot initiative that tried to control regional growth by restricting Tucson Water Department’s ability to expand its service area.

That proposal, a poorly written jumble of mandates, was rejected by voters in November. However, like some funerals, Proposition 200 brought a lot of people together who hadn’t spoken to each other in years.

This year, for the first time, we began to see collaboration between members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council at a level that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Both the county and the city are creating policies that link land- use decisions to the availability of water and to the impact that water consumption may have on consumers, the landscape and wildlife.

The Board of Supervisors started this process two years ago when it was updating its comprehensive plan, and it led, this month, to the adoption of amendments to the plan that will have far reaching implications for future growth.

The new amendments emphasize a relationship between what the county will allow to be built after considering what construction will do to water supplies. For the first time, the county is telling its planners they must examine how water use in a proposed development will affect existing communities and the natural landscape nearby. Armed with that information, the county’s elected officials can make decisions that are grounded in reality.

The city has made a start in the same direction. City Manager Mike Hein told the City Council at its Dec. 11 meeting that he’s instructed the water department – which provides water for Tucson and surrounding communities – to stop expanding the system to areas where it does not have any legal obligations.

Hein said flatly it isn’t Tucson’s responsibility to “enable growth” into areas where it has no political control. That’s true, of course, but that’s never stopped the water department’s expansion in the past. Hein’s declaration is clearly a new way of looking at sprawl.

Many difficult questions remain to be answered before the city, its suburbs and the county government settle on a lucid approach to managing growth and water use.

Most of these questions will center on who pays for what. Some of the questions deal with the condition of Tucson’s water infrastructure, riddled with aging and damaged water lines, and who will pay for upgrading that system. The same questions apply to the sewer and wastewater system controlled by Pima County.

Answers won’t come overnight. but 2007 will be seen as the year that the various jurisdictions finally acknowledged that their fates are intertwined, and that collaboration is the only intelligent way to move forward.

Growth forum

The Arizona Daily Star is developing a community forum to educate and bring the many pieces discussed in the adjacent editorial. It will be a catalyst for the process the planning for our region’s growth. The Communications Institute of Pasadena, Calif. is coordinating the forum’s format. For information on the forum and to become involved, go the www.communicationsinstitute.com. Click “Understanding Growth in the Tucson Region” and send information on you and/or your organization.

Originally published by CARLA MCCLAIN, ARIZONA DAILY STAR.

(c) 2007 Arizona Daily Star. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.