ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Tues., Oct. 30, 2007

Water use, growth collide; consensus best remedy

Our view: Latest water conversation shows urgent need for regional growth plan

Friday afternoon, Doubletree Inn. Midtown. About 200 people are gathered in the main ballroom discussing water, and nobody is nodding off. In fact, Richard Carlson, an economist who moved here from California five years ago, gets up and asks a pointed question that gets the old hands chuckling:

How did Tucson get to be this haphazard, sprawling mess? It looks like nothing was planned.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is on the stage, sitting next to City Manager Mike Hein. Huckelberry, we assume, knows the question is a good one, even if it belabors the obvious.

"Welcome to the West," he says, "where the only thing that's hated more than government is planning."

There's little doubt that Huckelberry understands the mentality that has led to urban sprawl. Not only have county policies contributed to it, it was subsequently Huckelberry's vision that led to one of the few attempts at controlling it.

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which he incubated, in effect creates an urban growth boundary at the edges of the metropolitan area. It does so by providing a scientific rationale for the preservation of native flora and fauna. That conservation plan, however, is not enough. It's useful to the extent that it directs our attention inward toward the city center, but it does not control all the elements — such as decisions about extending utility lines — that contribute to sprawl.

Clearly, the metropolitan area needs what its most myopic thinkers abhor — it needs a solid, specific regional growth plan.

At Friday's Tucson Community Conversation on Water, sponsored by the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, it was clear that there is a widespread perception that growth and water are on a collision course. The public wants solutions, and, for the first time ever, there appears to be a growing consensus among community leaders that what we need is less talk and more action.

FULL EDITORIAL: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/208810