AP reports that water experts are meeting in Tucson to discuss ways to find more water to provide for a doubling of Arizona’s population, roughly centered within the Phoenix-Tucson corridor, within 40 years. Along the way, California and Mexico, to name two, might be looking at new water sources, too. The options are few, and this stab at reality is in contrast to the party line regularly pushed by local political and business (excuse the term) leaders.

First, for a few notions offered up at the conference:

 One scenario could have three desalination plants on line by 2048 to increase the supply of Central Arizona Project water flowing to Phoenix and Tucson.

 One plant could be removing salt from seawater along the Gulf of California in the Mexican state of Sonora - and its booty is shared by Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico - and two other plants may be treating salt-laden groundwater in the areas of Buckeye and Gila Bend.

 Experts also hope a huge nuclear-power plant may be in operation along the Gulf of California in Sonora, producing 600 megawatts of power to provide the juice for the adjoining seawater desalination plant. And by 2048, construction could be under way to expand the size of the concrete CAP canal running from the Colorado River toTucson to deliver up to 2.2 million acre-feet of water a year.

Oh, where to begin? It is common belief in Arizona that we will never run out of water, because we’ve got such a good deal regarding our share of the Colorado River, courtesy of the Colorado River Compact. California might be doomed, and Nevada’s clearly in trouble, but we’re just A-okay. And so we build and build, big homes and apartment complexes and office buildings and shopping malls, not a thought about water. Portland, Oregon limits its growth, and Santa Fe dares not spread too wide, but the Arizona desert is simply land that hasn’t been beaten down and paved and developed yet.

 This dichotomy, between everything is fine and looking for a solution for an uncertain, not-too-distant future, is not the only contradiction. Each of the proposed solutions mentioned above involves Mexico, from desalination plants to a nuclear-powered plant, to sharing the Gulf of California, the same Mexico we’re building a fence to separate us from them, the same Mexico ripped apart by astonishing violence, the same Mexico which has actively encouraged millions of its citizens to break our laws and cross the border, the same Mexico… Well, you get the idea.

 In short: We’re depending on a neighbor with whom we are embroiled in seemingly intractable problems to cooperate on another problem that we are constantly denying exists.

Hey, with a start like that, what can go wrong?