Local opinion: Tucson has faced its current choice before

“You can’t stop progress.”

That is the phrase we always hear when a major project is proposed — especially one with obvious costs. It is offered as if it settles the matter before the discussion even begins.

The argument follows a familiar pattern. The benefits are immediate and visible: jobs, investment, growth. They are labeled “progress,” and therefore assumed to be good.

The costs are different. They lie in the future. They are harder to measure, easier to discount, and often irreversible by the time they arrive.

So they are given less weight.

The excitement builds quickly. The language becomes optimistic, forward-looking — almost inevitable.

And the hidden costs fade into the background.

Until they don’t.

Tucson has seen this before.

In the 1960s, construction of the Tucson Community Center was celebrated as a civic achievement. It modernized the city — but it also erased a substantial portion of Tucson’s historic core.

That loss was permanent.

It was not part of the original calculation.

Project Blue belongs to that same tradition.

Rejected in Tucson, it moved outward — first to Pima County, then toward Marana — crossing jurisdictional lines in search of approval.

But its effects will not respect those boundaries.

Even if built outside the city, it will draw from the same regional water system. Its impact will be felt here.

Developers promise efficiency-recycled wastewater, improved cooling systems, reduced consumption.

But water used is still water removed.

Much of it will be lost to evaporation. It will not return to the aquifer.

And the project will not stand alone.

Development attracts development. Housing, services, infrastructure — each adds demand.

Thousands of new spigots drawing from the same finite reserve.

We must not lose sight of where we are.

This is the Sonoran Desert. There is no permanent water source here.

The Central Arizona Project is not a guarantee. It is a system under strain. If Colorado River flows decline, as expected, that supply will shrink — even as growth continues.

And when it does, we will return to groundwater.

Groundwater is not a renewable engine of growth. It is a reserve — a savings account built over centuries and drawn down far more quickly than it can be replenished.

I arrived in Tucson in 1967, when the city lived on water it could see and understand. We pumped it from the ground, stored it in tanks, and sent it downhill through pipes.

There was one of the main wells at the top of the hill near my home. The water was mineral-rich and distinctive. It took some getting used to. But it had a kind of honesty to it. It was ours, and we knew its limits.

Even then, people understood that growth had consequences.

And then came another moment of decision.

In 1969, Tucson was presented with a completed freeway plan, backed by federal funding that seemed too valuable to refuse. It would have cut through homes, businesses, and historic neighborhoods, including Barrio Libre.

The assumption was that Tucson would accept it.

Instead, residents organized. University of Arizona students and faculty documented what would be lost. Community leaders preserved the stories that gave those neighborhoods meaning.

Together, they forced reconsideration.

Tucson chose not to build something simply because it could.

It chose to define itself.

That principle has not changed.

The question today is not whether Tucson will grow.

It will.

The question is whether we will recognize that water is the defining constraint of life in the desert — or continue to treat it as an afterthought.

Project Blue has already shown how these decisions unfold. When resistance appears in one place, the project moves to another.

Water does not move.

Aquifers do not relocate. They decline — quietly, invisibly, and permanently.

Tucson has faced this choice before.

The only question now is whether it still remembers how to answer it.