Phoenix

 “There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” — Edward Abbey

Asked to write about Arizona and water, I fear I will disappoint. My take is now too idiosyncratic, too impossible for the state's residents to even contemplate or for the economic and political elites to allow. Still, a reader asks; I'll deliver and at least start a conversation/argument.

In its particulars, Arizona's water issues are complicated, making them inaccessible to a population with lower levels of education and civic involvement, as well as little connection to the state's history. They did not, as I did, grow up with water — my mother working as part of the effort to win the Central Arizona Project. In general, Arizona's water issues are stark and simple: The state can't sustain double-digit percentage population increases every decade, particularly in subdivisions apart from historic urban footprints. This statement is anathema to the Real Estate Industrial Complex and what passes for an "economy" that Arizonans keep looking to resuscitate. But wait… In reality, Arizona probably doesn't have the water to support its current population for long. Beyond these basics, it's all over but the shouting.

Here's what I don't trust: The state Department of Water Resources or its active water management areas. The risks of compromise to water rules by the development elite is too great, exacerbated by continued under-funding of state government. And the 100-year supply "rule" for new development? Even if it's enforced what does it mean? One thing it does, because water is divorced from land-use regulations, is to cause a land rush to lock up aquifers that have taken eons to create — all to provide the illusion of security so another "master planned community" can expand out beyond the White Tanks. Meanwhile, much of the state lacks even this suspect oversight. Mojave County, notorious for its lack of water, was a hotspot for wildcat exurban sprawl before the housing collapse.

In 2008, Rogue Columnist began as my pro-bono work for the readers I left behind at the Arizona Republic. Nobody was offering my brand of analysis and commentary on Phoenix…

If Arizona
was a 'clean slate', how would you do it the second time around?

This challenge, from commenter Rate Crimes, is too tempting to avoid. But it risks being the kind of temptation found in the bars of history at closing time: A pointless counterfactual fling that will end in regret or even worse. No place can be separated from its moment in history, the larger forces at work upon it, the larger-than-life people who mold it, and the masses of people who live there. Arizona and Phoenix were always going to be exactly what they are. Maybe.

Yet here's one imagination exercise: An Arizona with 2 million people, about the population of real-life New Mexico (rather than 6.6 million). Most live in relatively compact versions of Phoenix and Tucson. Every city and town in the state has maintained its distinct identity, look, feel. The larger cities have kept and enhanced key industries while drawing high-value, leading edge sectors proportionate to (or disproportionately favorable to) their population. Housing is a much smaller part of the economy. Smaller places especially have scalable local economies. Multiple universities, federal laboratories and a robust technology cluster are a draw for international talent. Incomes are higher than the national average, as in real-life Washington state or Colorado. Most people are literate and educated, engaged in the community, committed to preserving the environment, part of a vibrant two-party political system that veers to moderation whomever is in power. This outward-looking state is a major trade hub for Mexico and Latin America, comfortable with its Hispanic part, but largely insulated from a huge illegal alien influx by its high-end economy and the cohesion of its cities.

I could get even more specific about Phoenix.

I'll wrap up my trip back home with the question that started it: What now?

In numerous conversations with the well-connected and just average 'Zonies, nobody has an answer. "Every time things seem to be improving, we take a step back," said one prominent player. "We have an unerring ability to shoot ourselves in the head." I would add: "And reload." While the state is very different from metro Phoenix in many ways, economically it has become an even less diverse mirror of it, depending on population growth, housing and tourism. The "plan," such as there is one, seems to be hoping the Growth Machine can sputter to life for one more good run. The white-right rhetoric about cutting taxes and regulation to gain business is nonsense: If that were the key, Mississippi and Somalia would be economic giants. The reality: There's no plan B.

In my old haunts, every little triumph is offset by a heartbreak or moronic misstep. Some new restaurants have set up along the light-rail line — wish some productive businesses or headquarters with high-wage jobs would do so. The historic districts continue to hold on, despite scads of "for-sale" signs. ASU downtown seems there to stay, no small accomplishment. Yet the number of empty storefronts is astounding, a sign of the lack of capital coming to the city. The city can't afford to keep up iconic Encanto Park while what was the shady oasis adjacent to the Viad tower has been turned into a horrid faux desert radioactive zone. Every time someone throws down rocks and removes shade trees and grass from the old city, it only increases the heat island and decreases the livability. "We're in a desert!!" No, Mr. or Ms. Transplant, old Phoenix was always an oasis.

Traveling around Arizona, it's difficult to imagine how the state can turn itself around, even if a majority understood the term. For most, a turnaround would mean a return to 40-percent population growth every decade, more sprawl, more "active adult resort living — with championship golf!," more spec retail development and office "parks" to house the real-estate outfits, mortgage boiler rooms and call centers. The dirty secret is that as an economy, Arizona outside of Phoenix and Tucson is "the Third World," as a prominent booster economist once told me, not for attribution. An overstatement of course, although the Third World also has its gated enclaves of the super-rich and depends heavily on tourism. But among the states, Arizona including Phoenix and Tucson performed dismally on almost any measure of economic well-being except for housing starts and population growth, the latter a mixed indicator that carries huge costs, too. And this was before the Great Recession.

Now tourism is in freefall, even before the Jim Crow anti-immigration law (and a Tea Party 'buycott' is of questionable help considering the bulwark of the "movement," New York Times spin notwithstanding, is economically distressed whites). The exurban and rural sprawl building of the mid-2000s is dead and decomposing. Even tony Sedona is suffering. Another striking fact is how dependent rural Arizona has become on everything from food to gasoline to Wal-Mart Chinese goodies trucked up from Phoenix, even as it has added huge gobs of new people. This region was once the epitome of localization, along with distribution via railroads. Now Flagstaff's rail yard has been ripped out and the two tracks of the BNSF "Transcon" run through alone, heavily ballasted for speedy passage as if this were the middle of nowhere. It's not merely that Arizona produces little now, but that such a layout is highly vulnerable, not least to the future of peak oil and its much higher gasoline prices. The forest looks sick despite the wet winter. Climate change is bad enough, but one wonders whether this miracle of creation can withstand more than 6 million people and their cars in a place far beyond its carrying capacity. Then there's the once-magical Verde Valley, profaned by sprawl around Cottonwood that makes Phoenix look like a model of planning, all sucking water that will be needed by the Salt River Project.

In Phoenix, one of the most arresting aspects of the depression — for the city has never been through anything like this — continues to be the relatively light traffic. I drove from Sky Harbor into midtown, hitting the Papago/Red Mountain/51 merge headed to Seventh Street at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday. Easy motoring. Three years before, it would have been an impossible mess. The air was relatively clear, even though the ozone and other vaporous car-vomited poisons congregate in north Scottsdale and Fountain Hills (awww). Not much looks different. This is the trick Phoenix plays on its residents, although the world is changing fast. Again, I don't see how this place recovers.