Even as the state has become more and more urban, the rural interests have maintained a surprisingly strong control in the Legislature that's made the Legislature increasingly irrelevent in these big growth issues. Growth control advocates, including the Sierra Club, tried to bypass legislatures in Colorado and Arizona last year, fielding two anti-sprawl ballot initiatives that would have established restrictive development boundaries around cities with populations of 250,000 or more. So did a related Arizona initiative that called for setting aside about 3 percent of the state's school trust land for conservation. But even a homebuilder knows this battle is far from over. They eye the West's urban expansion with deep suspicion, cloaking their ire with a dose of gallows humor.
All hell needs is water.