He zealously hiked and charted the canyonlands after signing on in 1967. His team scoured Snow Canyon in a 1970s drought and punched wells into a sandstone aquifer, quenching the hottest of Utah towns.

But history repeats.

"I made a career of bringing water to this community, and I still think there's enough out there," Gubler said last month.

The retiree's successors disagree, frightfully. Without a new fix, they say, the area that has become Utah's water-shortage sentinel will run dry next decade. It foreshadows the thirst awaiting metropolitan Salt Lake City unless residents heed the call and water their lawns less - or choose hardy high-desert plants instead.

Gubler's St. George wells enabled the Mormon church's former little cotton colony to pack Sun Belt retirees between the orange and black buttes. Washington County now numbers more than 150,000 people, having grown nearly 60,000 just this decade.

That bloat is the reason the county wants a massive pipeline to siphon about a quarter of Utah's remaining Colorado River share. The state has agreed to build the pipeline if Washington County's water district pays back 70 percent, with the rest coming from lesser beneficiaries in Kane and Iron counties. The project is under federal environmental review.

It's dividing the county and making Gubler cringe.

"When I went to work for the city of St. George, we was talking about a city of 6,000 to 8,000," he said in the old-timer's slow twang endemic to a region commonly called Utah's Dixie. "We'd run out of water and go find more. Now, I think we're big enough that nobody cares if we get any bigger."

Without water, though, the economy shrivels. Construction is St. George's engine - 8,400 of the county's 54,000 nonfarm jobs last year - and without fresh lubrication it threatens to seize up.

"Everybody always needs a house. That's the thing about America," housing developer Wayne Vaughn said on a May afternoon while showing his wife around the sagebrush and cottonwood lot that soon will sprout their own new home and greenhouse. It's an exurban retreat at the base of yellow and iron-red bluffs near New Harmony, in the county's north.

"Plan ahead or wait 10 years from now and be caught with your pants down and not have the water to supply everybody," he said.

It might not take 10 years. At current usage rates and population projections, the waterworks start sucking air in 2014. The Washington County Water Conservancy District has plans for buying farm water and reusing some more to push that back to about 2018 - the expected year for pipeline construction.

The 1 million people in Salt Lake County will max out their supply between 2030 and 2040, and that assumes they cut back on per-person consumption by a quarter, said Bart Forsyth of Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, the county's largest supplier. The only option is $1 billion in controversial water projects such as a Bear River diversion - a cost that will appear on monthly water bills.

"Unless we really change the way we landscape, we're going to have to continue to develop water," Forsyth said. Utahns use two-thirds of their water outdoors.

St. George's new water diviners want to pump their source 139 miles across southern Utah and northern Arizona from Lake Powell into Sand Hollow Reservoir, near Hurricane. It doubles Washington County's supply.

It'll be expensive to prime that pump. Critics complain and backers concede that the $585 million price projection could balloon to $1 billion or beyond with inflation and interest.

Some fear a pipeline paired with strict conservation could enable a million people in the desert. The official projection is 450,000, still a jolt to many.

"If I wanted to live in Los Angeles, I'd have moved to Los Angeles 50 years ago," Gubler said.

The Washington County Water Conservancy District is banking on impact fees - the money put up by new lot owners to offset their public service costs - to cover the pipeline. Residents also pay a $1.75 monthly water surcharge to buffer the account against low-growth years when impact fees dwindle.

Those who worry about the bill insist it's not even necessary. If people cut back on watering lawns, shrubs and golf courses, they claim, the migrants will still stream in.

"We have enough water to triple our current population," said Brooks Pace, a St. George land developer, but one who's campaigning for the Legislature on a growth-control platform. "That equates to 100,000 new homes and billions of dollars in commercial development."

Gubler, the former city water superintendent, believes the current supply could sustain a doubling of the population.

It all makes Water Conservancy District Assistant General Manager Barbara Hjelle shake her head. "I have never seen any objective data on how you get to those numbers." Her district's figures show the current supply drying up next decade, around the time Washington County tops 220,000 people.

Pipeline opponents say the math is simple: Residents average 327 gallons apiece per day, whereas Tucson, Ariz., is bigger but water-wise and uses just 110 gallons. Save water and there's still a growth pool.

It's a comparison that irks the district because Tucson gets monsoon rains to aid landscaping without counting at the water meter, while St. George relies on stored snowmelt across the horizon. They also argue that a quarter of the water goes to oft-vacant vacation homes, and half to commercial and industrial uses. They prefer to say that year-round residents use about 127 gallons a day.

British retirees Mary and Ned Cordery have a great view of southern Utah's dilemma. It's right off their Dammeron Valley deck, and in their household mirror.

"We chose southern Utah because of the scenery," Mary said after preparing a card table for an evening with friends playing bunco, the rollicking dice parlor game. "And we found the people very friendly."

The Corderys won't say there are too many transplants like them now, but they do have mixed feelings.

"I wouldn't like to see it turn into another Las Vegas," she said. "It would be nice to have a referendum [on the pipeline]."

Water officials say their assignment is to accommodate growth, not judge it.

"That's for elected officials," Hjelle said. They could say they don't want the water. "That's a scenario we've never faced."

The Corderys' square adobe-style home is wrapped in pinion junipers and flowering cactuses, tall corner windows for viewing the older development below and the scruffy Pine Valley Mountains beyond. It's tucked away up a tar chip-sealed road that winds past unsold lots, red fire hydrants and green utility boxes popping up in the forest.

"There's a tendency when you find a place to want to keep it as it is," Ned said.

That's why he's unsure how he feels about the pipeline and the growth it promotes.

That, and his fear that his taxes will rise to cover what development fees don't.