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Tucson is experiencing its third-driest monsoon season since record-keeping began 130 years ago. Only the monsoons in 2020 and 2024 were drier, the 蜜聊直播 Daily Star reported. There鈥檚 more: Summer rainfall totals in 2022 and 2023 were double-digit percentages below average.

It adds up to five of the last six summers worsening our three-decade-long drought and reducing groundwater recharge.

Meanwhile, some say the City Council鈥檚 rejection of Project Blue and its water-gulping plans blew an economic opportunity and job creation.

The council鈥檚 decision, though, might have been informed by the hierarchy of needs: water comes first. As the recent lack of rainfall shows, every gallon is worth conserving, using and reusing. That must transcend all else, with economic development folded into water management, not the reverse.

Political and business leaders must strategize about economic growth with our limited water supply as the guidance. We have 59 years鈥� worth in the ground or otherwise accounted for, one city official said at a Project Blue forum.

Perhaps to be realistic, he should have said no more than 59 years, because of drought, rising temperatures and concomitant shrinking Colorado River allocations. Prospects for improvement are minimal given a lack of comprehensive action to curb global warming.

Those 59 years will include the lifespans of Tucson鈥檚 current school-age children 鈥� our children and grandchildren. Thus, Project Blue鈥檚 rejection was not a 鈥渇ailure,鈥� as a former Chamber of Commerce official wrote in an Aug. 23 op-ed, but rather conservation for coming generations, including that writer鈥檚 three children.

Fifty-nine years back 鈥� 1966 鈥� groundwater was Tucson鈥檚 sole source, and it was being rapidly depleted. City and state officials pushed for the Central 蜜聊直播 Project.

It took nearly three decades to get the CAP federally approved, funded, built and delivering water, starting in 1992. By then, the aquifer had dropped 200 feet 鈥� 200 feet! 鈥� causing subsidence that damaged buildings and other infrastructure.

With CAP water, the city began recharging the aquifer; it rose 100 feet by 2018, as measured near downtown Tucson.

Less than 59 years from now, by 2060, when today鈥檚 school-age children will be middle-age, worst case is 70% less Colorado River water for Tucson, said a 2021 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation study that the Star鈥檚 Tony Davis reported on at the time.

Note that the study was done before four straight extremely dry monsoon seasons.

Davis鈥� 2021 story quoted water researcher Kathryn Sorensen of 蜜聊直播 State University: 鈥淭he health of Tucson鈥檚 aquifers is nearly entirely dependent on flows from the Colorado River. As these flows diminish in a hotter and drier future, Tucson鈥檚 aquifers will likely suffer.鈥�

A hotter and drier future is here, and CAP cuts to agriculture have begun. Tucson could be next.

We must plan for the long term, not the 15 years that a developer said would be Project Blue鈥檚 lifetime. Even with its jobs and water reclamation offerings, some of which Tucson was already planning to do, Project Blue would not be a wise use of water. It behooves political and business leaders to seek economic growth that is water-appropriate.

We don鈥檛 want a situation such as at Mesa Verde in what is now the Four Corners region. That civilization was 700 years old when a drought began around 1277 and lasted two decades. By the year 1300, Mesa Verde鈥檚 6,000 inhabitants had abandoned it, migrating south in search of the single most important need for life 鈥� water.