The race for the CAP Board is heating up.  Here's  the coverage from the Tucson Weekly. 

In the latest edition of the Tucson Weekly, Tim Vanderpool writes about the race for the four Pima County seats on the 15-member Central Arizona Project board.

Up at Lake Havasu, the Central Arizona Project taps into a once ferocious Colorado River. From there, the CAP canal quietly dissects one tough stretch of real estate after another, meandering southward through the Little Harquahala Basin, the Tonopah Desert and into Phoenix, before finishing its journey on the edges of Tucson.

Some 80 feet wide and 336 miles long, the concrete canal is a feat of monumental proportions. But depending upon your perspective, it may also be a monument to human folly, for within this system of aqueducts, reservoirs and pumping stations resides the illusion that our thirsty state can grow forever.

Future and folly were both on display when four candidates vying for the four Pima County seats on the 15-member Central Arizona Project board hashed over growth and water policy. (Six candidates are running for those four seats; land-use attorney Steve Lenihan and Pat Jacobs were not present.) The Sept. 9 forum was hosted by the green-minded group Sustainable Tucson, and the repartee was lively. But amidst all the upbeat chatter about Colorado River flows and conservation, about recharge and discharge and desalinization, the candidates failed to address two simple notions: that perhaps our dry desert isn’t the perfect place for 11 million people, and maybe we shouldn’t spend billions of dollars trying to make it so.

However, it wasn’t for lack of audience efforts that these worries went unanswered; the issue simmered palpably through the mixed crowd of politicos, activists and working folks.

Here's an interesting article about DEQ's priorities... and they have a big overlap with the ACC, so I thought you would be interested.

PHOENIX — Capturing rainwater for drinking. Reusing what goes down the shower drain to water the lawn. Irrigating trees with used water from an air-conditioning system.

Recycling water in these and other ways is key to meeting Arizona's long-term water needs, the director of the state Department of Environmental Quality said last week.

"Reclaiming wastewater is absolutely the future," Benjamin Grumbles said in an interview.
 
Arizona currently recycles about 4 percent of its water. Grumbles, who served as assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he wants to see that figure increase significantly.

"In my view, there is no such thing as wastewater, just wasted water," he said.

Grumbles, appointed to the post earlier this year by Gov. Jan Brewer, said one of his chief goals is increasing collaboration among agencies responsible for water, energy and the environment. That commitment helped bring about a blue- ribbon panel overseen by his department, the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Corporation Commission.