Desert Hawk Books

 

Fuel for Growth
Water and Arizona’s Urban Environment

Douglas E. Kupel

 

 

310 pages
20 illus.
9 maps
6" x 9"

Cloth

Quantity: $39.95 & S/H

 

Read the Preface

Cities in the arid West would not be what they are today without water and the technology needed to deliver it to users. The history of water development in Arizona goes hand in hand with the state’s economic growth, and Arizona’s future is inextricably tied to this scarce resource.

Fuel for Growth describes and interprets the history of water resource development and its relationship to urban development in Arizona’s three signature cities: Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff. These three urban areas could hardly be more different: a growth-oriented metropolis, an environmentally conscious city with deep cultural roots, and an outdoor-friendly mountain town. Despite these differences, community leaders and public officials of the cities have taken similar approaches to developing water resources with varying degrees of success and acceptance.

Douglas Kupel has created a new vision of water history based on the Arizona experience. He challenges many of the traditional assumptions of environmental history by revealing that the West’s aridity has had relatively little impact on the development of municipal water infrastructure in the three cities. While urban growth in the West is often characterized as the product of an elite group of water leaders, the development of Arizona’s cities is shown to reflect the broad aspirations of all the state's urban citizens.

The book traces water development from the era of private water service to municipal ownership of water utilities and examines the impact of the post–World War II boom and subsequent expansion. Taking in the Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Project, and the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, Kupel explores the ongoing struggle between growth and environmentalism. He advocates public policy measures that can sustain a water future for the state.

As the urban West enters a new century of water management, Arizona’s progress will increasingly be tied to that of its ever-expanding cities. Fuel for Growth documents an earlier era of urban water use and provides important recommendations for the future of water development in the West’s key population centers.

“Despite water being a constant concern for its inhabitants, the water history of Arizona has been largely ignored in comparison to other western states. But because Arizona is different from other areas in the arid West—most notably California—a study of its water history offers a different perspective from traditional treatments of water and the environment. This new perspective charts a divergent course from the West’s water icons of Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire and Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert. . . .
“Examining the Arizona experience may not obliterate traditional views of water history in the West, but it will go a long way toward demonstrating that the historical pattern was more diverse.”
—Douglas E. Kupel

Douglas E. Kupel has worked for the City of Phoenix Law Department since 1988 where he conducts historical research for water rights litigation. He is an adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University, Phoenix College, and Gateway Community College.