Southern Arizona’s most powerful bureaucrat could lose some clout for his latest scheme to gain more control over water in unincorporated Pima County.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is pushing a plan to let county officials decide zoning requests on the basis of how well developers and business owners can explain where they’ll get the water for people in the projects they want to build.

The policy, which had its first hearing before the county Planning and Zoning Commission last week, would affect nearly everyone wanting to change an existing zoning plan to build houses or commercial buildings outside the city limits.

Petitioners would be required to explain in great detail where they’ll get the water for their projects, how the projects would affect its water basin and whether their developments might harm any ecosystem using that water.

Note the "might affect" and "any ecosystem" references. Does that remind you of the county’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which now blocks most owners from building on 75 to 80 percent of their land and rendered thousands of acres unusable because of a pygmy owl that really wasn’t endangered?

It should.

Apparently no project will be too small to escape Huckelberry’s new rules. Developers of parcels larger than four acres, builders of homes on more than five acres, and anyone who wants to build four or more homes on just one acre would have to meet the new standards.

By now, you may be thinking Huckelberry has come up with a great idea to save our precious but finite water supply for future generations.

I doubt it. This won’t do much more than existing laws, but it will cost more and make the process much more draconian.

Remember Huckelberry and Pima County aren’t in the water business.

The City of Tucson supplies most of the water here, with Marana, the Metropolitan Water District, the Flowing Wells Irrigation District and other smaller entities providing the rest.

Pima County treats a lot of sewage, often badly. But it’s also in the power business, and I don’t mean electricity.

Political power. Knowing that local governments will soon begin discussing some type of regional water and sewer authority, the county wants to strengthen its hand by claiming Marana’s sewage, talking about conservation and now moving to determine zoning cases on the basis of water availability.

County officials fear that if they don’t create an image as major players, the city and its Tucson Water utility will dictate the rules for that regional authority.

Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup and the City Council should keep mum on Huckelberry’s plan and hope the Board of Supervisors adopts it. Ditto for other local cities and towns.

The new county zoning and water rules could be the greatest incentive in years for rural property owners to demand they be annexed into Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana or Sahuarita.

They would still have to obey existing federal and state water laws, but they could escape the arbitrary county requirements.

Annexing new buildings to Tucson would boost its property tax revenues.

Adding people to any of the cities or towns would give them more state-shared sales and gas tax money.

I thought the Sonoran Desert plan would do that a few years ago. But while Sahuarita grew a lot, and Marana and Oro Valley grew somewhat, Tucson officials prevented an annexation stampede by continuing their obstructionist policies for rezonings, plan approvals and building inspections.

Huckelberry is about to hand Tucson a second chance to change its can’t-do ways and bring more state money into this area.