The Water Hole

He stands with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his white shirt a stab of brightness against the muted greens and beiges of the desert. In front of him, Black Mountain looms against the distant horizon. Behind him, Phoenix stretches in all directions. Even from the back, Wesley Steiner appears to be a man with a purpose. He has no interest in the scenery or the city. His expert engineer's eye is busy calculating the flow of water running in the big concrete canal at his feet. He waits and watches. Then he smiles and turns to stride away, back to his car, back to his office at the Arizona Department of Water Resources (DWR). It has been a long time coming, but now that the Central Arizona Project (CAP) is delivering that precious one million acre-feet of Colorado River water to the Valley, Steiner's job is done. Although the scene above hasn't happened yet, he knows it will. Few men commit their professional lives to a single project. Wes Steiner has. And when water finally runs in the CAP in 1985 or '86, Steiner can walk away from the director's chair at DWR secure that he accomplished what he set out to do more than thirty-five years earlieropen up a new, vital water hole for Central Arizona.

THE WATER HOLE BY PAM HAIT

The picture doesn't fit the words. "If we weren't bringing in the CAP we'd already be overexpanded in our water demands," Steiner insists. To grasp the implication of his statement, let's leave the future for a moment and look behind us. There's redheaded Jack Swilling swaggering in the distance, a half smirk on his moustached face, his arm protectively around his Mexican bride, Trinidad. Swilling dug a ditch in 1867, the first irrigation ditch in the Salt River Valley since the Hohokam Indians scratched out a canal system centuries earlier. The ditch worked, carrying water from the Salt River. By the following year about 100 people had settled around Swilling's water hole. Behind Swilling crowd some 4800 impressive-looking individualsmembers of the Salt River Valley Water Users Association. Organized in February, 1903, their efforts culminated in an epic achievement in water reclamation-the construction of Theodore Roosevelt Dam at the confluence of Tonto Creek and the Salt River, forming Roosevelt Lake. Ultimately, Mormon Flat Dam and Canyon Lake, Horseshoe Dam and Apache Lake, Stewart Mountain Dam and Saguaro Lake followed. Each structure changed the once wild river into a community water source. Until the advent of new technology, people farmed and lived where water was-on land served by the Salt River Project. Then, after 1908, the scene changed. New groundwater pumping techniques made it possible to tap that big underground reservoir and move that water around. No longer did people have to live within the bounds of the Salt River Project. Now anyone could farm or build a house or run a business anywhere in the vast Valley. By the '50s, for the first time in history, water no longer was a physical constraint for Phoenix. The city could grow and the water could flow-everywhere and anywhere. And for the next two decades that's exactly what happened. The population mushroomed; agriculture bloomed. However, as the free-wheeling '60s closed and the serious '70s opened, the picture changed. Cracks appeared in the desert floorliterally, in the form of ground subsidence, and philosophically, as the issue of water assumed critical proportions. Supply. Subsidence. Quantity. Quality. The issues boiled down to this: Phoenix no longer had enough water where everyone needed it and when everybody wanted it. Enter the CAP. Authorized by Congress in 1968 after decades of struggle, in its early dreamlife it was an agricultural project, but now clearly it is a municipal and industrial water project. "You see, that's why there's never been a shortage of water perceived in the Phoenix area," Dean Moss of the Department of Water Resources explains, picking up the thread of the story. "We've been short on wells and treatment plants, but as long as people are willing to pay to pump, there's always been enough. Things got dicey in 1981, but we've always been bailed out by rain and snow." Rain and snow, life-giving watery elements desert dwellers rarely consider, spell the difference between an oasis and a mirage. Without rain and snow falling on the surface streams and mountainsides in northern Arizona, swelling the banks of the White and Black rivers and spilling into the Salt, without thunderstorms dumping buckets of rain onto the desert floor, puddling, seeping, and eventually replenishing the underground natural reservoirs, life would be very different here. Surely there would have been no early irrigation system, no Jack Swilling, no Teddy Roosevelt peering over his glasses announcing the dedication of the grand new dam named in his honor, no dedicated, determined Wes Steiner, and no burgeoning, gleaming oasis of a city fulfilling its desert destiny as it gathers around the water hole.

techniques made it possible to tap that big underground reservoir and move that water around. No longer did people have to live within the bounds of the Salt River Project. Now anyone could farm or build a house or run a business anywhere in the vast Valley. By the '50s, for the first time in history, water no longer was a physical constraint for Phoenix. The city could grow and the water could flow-everywhere and anywhere. And for the next two decades that's exactly what happened. The population mushroomed; agriculture bloomed. However, as the free-wheeling '60s closed and the serious '70s opened, the picture changed. Cracks appeared in the desert floorliterally, in the form of ground subsidence, and philosophically, as the issue of water assumed critical proportions. Supply. Subsidence. Quantity. Quality. The issues boiled down to this: Phoenix no longer had enough water where everyone needed it and when everybody wanted it. Enter the CAP. Authorized by Congress in 1968 after decades of struggle, in its early dreamlife it was an agricultural project, but now clearly it is a municipal and industrial water project. "You see, that's why there's never been a shortage of water perceived in the Phoenix area," Dean Moss of the Department of Water Resources explains, picking up the thread of the story. "We've been short on wells and treatment plants, but as long as people are willing to pay to pump, there's always been enough. Things got dicey in 1981, but we've always been bailed out by rain and snow." Rain and snow, life-giving watery elements desert dwellers rarely consider, spell the difference between an oasis and a mirage. Without rain and snow falling on the surface streams and mountainsides in northern Arizona, swelling the banks of the White and Black rivers and spilling into the Salt, without thunderstorms dumping buckets of rain onto the desert floor, puddling, seeping, and eventually replenishing the underground natural reservoirs, life would be very different here. Surely there would have been no early irrigation system, no Jack Swilling, no Teddy Roosevelt peering over his glasses announcing the dedication of the grand new dam named in his honor, no dedicated, determined Wes Steiner, and no burgeoning, gleaming oasis of a city fulfilling its desert destiny as it gathers around the water hole.

A final word about “finite.” All water holes have finite limits. Desert water holes are no exceptions. Statistics tell the tale. Demand: Today agriculture accounts for fifty-five percent of the water used in the Phoenix area. Municipalities drink thirty percent; industry consumes six percent, and losses to evaporation are estimated at six percent.

Demand: Today agriculture accounts for fifty-five percent of the water used in the Phoenix area. Municipalities drink thirty percent; industry consumes six percent, and losses to evaporation are estimated at six percent.

Supply: Groundwater is thirtyfive percent of that supply. Surface water accounts for another thirty-five percent. Sewage effluent and incidental recharge balance the remainder of the water budget. In 1980, acutely aware of the need to preserve a balance between the growing demand for water and a finite supply of this resource, the Arizona legislature passed the Arizona Groundwater Management Act. The key elements of the legislation are conservation and control. The groundwater act recognizes that water cannot continue to be taken out of the ground at a rate faster than it can be replaced. The law affirms what Dean Moss emphasizes, that the Phoenix metropolitan area has already run out of good quality, inexpensive water. In the future, good quality water will cost more. Nevertheless, tomorrow's water budget can only be balanced by using less.

Pam Hait, a frequent contributor to Highways, also writes for Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, and Sunday Woman.