Arizona plans future water supply

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- It's 2048 in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Do you know where your water is coming from?Thomas McCann, a top official with the agency that runs the Central Arizona Project, thinks he does. By 2048, he envisions:-- Three desalination plants to increase the supply of water flowing to Phoenix and Tucson. One is removing salt from seawater along the Gulf of California and the other two are treating salt-laden groundwater.-- A huge nuclear power plant humming, producing 600 megawatts of power to provide the juice for the adjoining seawater desalination plant.-- Construction is under way to expand the size of the concrete canal running from the Colorado River to Tucson to deliver up to 2.2 million acre-feet of water a year. An acre-foot, 325,851 gallons, supplies enough water for two to three families for a year.-- A Colorado River strengthened by "cloud seeding," which causes more rain, and other forms of weather modification.McCann is resource-planning manager for the three-county Central Arizona Water Conservation District, which oversees the Central Arizona Project. He shared his vision this week at a conference on the future of the Colorado River.But McCann -- trying to plan for a three county region in Arizona that expects to double its population by 2048 -- by no means has universal support.Many conservationists, including Sierra Club members, attacked his vision as a fantasy. They questioned whether the money would be available for the projects and whether the energy required for desalination would make it economically and environmentally feasible.The critics said leaders should concentrate on conserving water rather than simply searching for more. They also question the likelihood that scientists will find a way to handle nuclear plant waste.Bob Cook, a planner and economist active in the environmental group Sustainable Tucson, said the presentation ignored the rising costs of energy that are already causing crises in transportation industries."People will migrate to where the water is," Cook said. "There's no real analysis here of the factors behind our population growth -- cheap water, cheap land and cheap energy -- and how they are changing."The Central Arizona Project is a large system of canals that sends Colorado River water 336 miles from Lake Havasu City to Tucson.The system provides nearly 3 million acre-feet of water annually for farming and municipalities in the Phoenix and Tucson regions. It also supplies 12 Indian tribes.Construction of the project, which began in 1973, took 20 years and cost $4 billion. Planning and lobbying for the project began more than 50 years earlier.But the CAP's top official predicted that at least some of the ideas in McCann's vision would come to pass, although the agency has no formal blueprint for turning them into reality.Sahuarita, Ariz.-area pecan farmer Richard Walden, thinks desalinization is worth considering."We built CAP and started getting water from it (nearly) 25 years ago, and for a while we had more water than we needed," said Walden, of Farmers Investment Co. "Years later, we have to start looking for more."The conference was sponsored by the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center and a host of other entities.Desalination has gained momentum as water providers grapple with the twin pressures of population growth and drought.Arizona and Mexican officials have started preliminary talks on the possibility of building a plant along the Gulf of California.(E-mail Tony Davis at tdavis(at)azstarnet.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)