EDITORIAL: An expensive daydream 

For a brief moment, we foolishly believed that all this Gila (and, hey, maybe the San Francisco!) river diversion talk was about to come to a screeching halt, once local governments were confronted with committing themselves, and their citizens, to construct and maintain forever a multimillion-dollar project.

Thankfully, those true believers at the Gila/ San Francisco Water Commission found a way past that obstacle. They managed to convince the Interstate Stream Commission that no one should really have to takeresponsibility for making this project a reality. Why, someone might give us free money, or the project could turn out to cost millions of dollars less than the estimates — because that’s a thing that happens in real- life government projects, right?

So the end result is that the lawyers and engineers will continue to squander the federal money we have in hand — money that could be building actual water projects — until there’s nothing left but a room full of plans, reports and studies that will never see the light of day. All of our local governments can sign right on to the joint powers agreement with the ISC, because, hey, it’s not like it costs us anything!

That is, it costs us nothing but time and money — the two things we can’t afford to squander if we’re serious about the future of our communities.

RELATED: State sends Gila diversion deal to local governments