In Search of a Drought-Proof Source - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 281

CHAPTER 27
In Search of a Drought-Proof Source
NO SUCH THING AS NORMAL
In America, events can move from the impossible to the inevitable without ever
stopping at the probable.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
In the spring of 2008, a hot wind blew out of the Sonoran Desert, blasting sand through
the air and rolling tumbleweeds across the streets of Phoenix, Arizona. The temperature
was nearing one hundred degrees, and the air was bone-dry. The few people caught out-
side shielded their eyes, hunched their shoulders, and ran through the flying grit from
one air-conditioned sanctuary to another. On the third floor of a large beige office build-
ing downtown, Herb Guenther , the director of the Arizona Department of Water Re-
sources, and one of the last of the classic Water Buffaloes of the Floyd Dominy school,
was committing near-blasphemy. “Climate change is for real,” he said. “We can't keep do-
ing things the same old way.”
I was there to find out how a man of his experience was coping with increased water
demands in a state that was already the hottest in the nation, and how it would adapt to
even hotter, drier, more crowded conditions in the future.
For an old-school water manager such as Herb Guenther to acknowledge “climate
change” and the need for “sustainability” was a major leap. He joined the Bureau of
Reclamation as a wildlife biologist in 1971 and inherited Commissioner Dominy's le-
gendary harpoon-size electrical pointer from the bureau. Guenther has no use for what
he calls “environmental extremists” who have saddled Americans with “a Chicken Little
mentality,” in which “everything man does is considered bad” for the planet.
But in discussing climate change, the sometimes reactionary Guenther sounded al-
most as progressive as Peter Gleick: “We can't just pray for more rain. We need to develop
creative strategies that will allow us to use our limited water in a sustainable way.”
Guenther walks with a slight limp and tilts to one side as he sits. “It's from flood fight-
ing in the desert,” he explained. “It's ironic, but that's life in Arizona.” In 1993, ighting
a lash lood on the Gila River , he blew out two of his cervical disks trying to save his
airboat in a biblical downpour. “We're either in drought or flood here. There's no such