Big Splash in the Arid West

By William R. Doerner

It ranks along with the Grand Coulee and Hoover dams as one of the century's costliest and most complex public works projects. It carries a price tag of $1.3 billion and has been a building for twelve years--so far. It will not be fully operational until the early 1990s, probably at the cost of another $2.3 billion. But when Interior Secretary Donald Hodel and Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt switched on the huge pump of the Hassayampa water plant last Friday, dedicating the mammoth Central Arizona Project, they signaled the opening of a new and possibly contentious era throughout much of the West. Within the next few months, the maze of aqueducts, pumping stations, tunnels, siphons and control gates now stretching 198 miles across Arizona's desert will change the way the region manages, and divvies up, its vital water resources.

The CAP system is an engineering marvel of the first order. It is designed to move precious Colorado River water, at the rate of more than 10 million cu. ft. per hour, from Lake Havasu on the California border southeast across the state to the expanding population centers of Phoenix and Tucson. A series of 14 pumping stations will force the water through a seven-mile tunnel in the Buckskin Mountains and lift the load 2,900 ft. over the course of a seven-day journey. The flow is monitored by a Modcomp JC 5000 computer situated in CAP headquarters near Phoenix, where controllers keep track of the system's operations on a 30-ft.-wide lighted map. In case of a rupture caused by an earthquake, or other serious trouble, the canals can be shut down in minutes.

Not since the building of the Alaska oil pipeline has a construction project posed more daunting challenges. In parts of the desert where daytime temperatures reach a scorching 120DEG F, work shifts began under lights at midnight, and liquid nitrogen was used to cool some of the 2.1 million cu. yds. of concrete poured. To allay environmental concerns, engineers built walkways across parts of the canals for the use of cattle and mule deer, and aqueduct sides were deliberately made rough to lend footing for smaller animals that might climb down for a drink. Human visitors are not welcome, but the outstretched ribbon of water has already inspired one desert sportsman to use the canal as a water-ski run.

For Arizona, CAP provides an alternative to a well that is steadily going dry. Long dependent on aquifers for most of its water, the rapidly growing state has been depleting its underground supplies twice as fast as they can be replenished. CAP's annual gush will eventually furnish Arizona with some 1.5 million acre-feet of water (one acre-foot is the amount needed to inundate one acre to the level of a foot and is roughly the quantity used annually by a family of four). Babbitt, who is fond of calling CAP his state's "last water hole," likens the effect of its start-up to the arrival of the first transcontinental railroad in 1882. Says Don Anderson, the project's chief engineer: "Without it, growth in Arizona would have to stop."

Even with it, Arizona is hardly awash in excess water. Indeed, Babbitt sought to ensure that Arizona's liquid riches would not be squandered, by winning passage in 1980 of the nation's most stringent water-management program. The law discourages the state's farmers from using CAP water to expand production of heavily irrigated cotton and citrus crops by requiring the growers to forgo an amount of groundwater equal to their use of the new supply. The measure also provides for the sale of water rights by farmers to developers and local water systems, thus promoting growth without creating new strains on the supply of water. The water-management law will eventually force the rest of the state to follow the example of parched Tucson, where residents have given up cultivating lawns and have cut their per capita consumption more than 25% since 1974. Says the Governor: "The key to our water future lies in draconian management of our resources."

Draconian measures may also be in store for an area reaching well beyond Arizona. Six other states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and California) fall inside the Colorado River basin. Under an agreement reached in 1922, each state is entitled to a portion of the river's waters. Arizona's share was set at 2.8 million acre-feet, roughly one-fifth of the Colorado's flow. Because it lacked transporting capacity, however, the state has used less than half of its legal entitlement, allowing California to take much of the remainder. The CAP's new flow will thus put pressure on Southern California, particularly the booming but arid San Diego area, to find additional sources of supply. While more water from Northern California's High Sierra may be available, the West's continued population boom and unpredictable circumstances like drought could lead to a savage squeeze. Says Colorado Governor Dick Lamm: "We're playing a climatic slot machine."

Nor is CAP likely to be the final demand on the Colorado River's bounty. No reclamation work even close to CAP's size is currently planned; Congress, mindful of criticism of pork-barrel projects, has not authorized a major new water program since 1976. Yet Lamm's own state is likely to need more water by the end of the century. Congress has funded parts of an ongoing $1.2 billion reclamation project in Utah that would involve the Colorado's water. Since the river's harvest is fixed, and already overal-located, experts warn that the only way to accommodate these and other projects is through planning and austerity. In dry days to come, Arizona's new canals may prove to be the Colorado River basin's last big splurge. --By William R. Doerner. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Phoenix and Robert C. Wurmstedt/Denver

With reporting by Reported by Richard Woodbury/Phoenix, Robert C. Wurmstedt/Denver