Interview with Grady Gammage - Central Arizona Project

not sure that’s right. I think it’s more likely that the rural growth will be
constrained by water. I think that is one issue.
A second issue is whether the GRD can continue to survive and allow
development to occur essentially on groundwater, based on the expectation that
we will have enough surface water in the future to put it back underground. I
think it’s a very open question. I’m inclined to think we’re going to have to shut
the GRD down before too many more years. If this were a live broadcast I
would’ve never said that. I said that at a CAP Board meeting one time. I said,
“We may have to look at closing the enrollment of this thing.” My phone rang off
the hook for three days. And a lot of the calls were from clients of mine saying,
“Are you nuts Never say that in public. It’s implying that the growth machine
can’t keep going.” People are very paranoid about that kind of stuff. I think the
GRD, how it is currently functioning, probably can’t continue to go on.
I think the most complex and difficult water question we face in Arizona is what
we want the long-term trade off to be between the kind of landscape we live in
and how many people live here. We’re not really even yet beginning to deal with
this. We made Phoenix a habitable place by bringing water here and by turning it
relatively green: big trees, lush lawns, those kinds of things. We now decide that
that’s not really the right thing to do; maybe we’ll keep the old big trees and lush
but in the new areas we’re going to ration our water use way down. That makes
those new areas hotter. It may make them less hospitable over the long term,
Interview with Grady Gammage
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