Pipeline Dreams: The Desert City Out To Surpass Phoenix By Importing Water (theguardian.com) 125
Buckeye, Arizona, is eyeing 'crazy' ideas to keep growing, including piping water hundreds of miles uphill from Mexico. From a report: Arizona, stressed by years of drought, has declared its housebuilding boom will have to be curbed due to a lack of water but one of its fastest-growing cities is refusing to give up its relentless march into the desert -- even if it requires constructing a pipeline that would bring water across the border from Mexico. The population of Buckeye, located 35 miles west of Phoenix, has doubled over the past decade to just under 120,000 and it is now priming itself to eventually become one of the largest cities in the US west. The city's boundaries are vast -- covering an area stretching out into the Sonoran Desert that would encompass two New York Cities -- and so are its ambitions.
Buckeye expects to one day contain as many as 1.5 million people, rivaling or even surpassing Phoenix -- the sixth largest city in the US that uses roughly 2bn gallons of water a day -- by sprawling out the tendrils of suburbia, with its neat lawns, snaking roads and large homes, into the baking desert. Arizona's challenging water situation appears a major barrier to such hopes, however. In June, the state announced that new uses of its groundwater have essentially hit a limit, placing restrictions on house building, just a few months after the state lost a fifth of its water allocation from the ailing Colorado River.
There isn't enough water beneath Buckeye to support homes not already being built, Arizona's water department has said. But the city is embarking upon an extraordinary scramble to find water from other sources -- by recycling it, purchasing it or importing it -- to maintain the sort of hurtling growth that continues to propel the US west even in an era of climate crisis. "Personally, my view is that we are still full steam ahead," said Eric Orsborn, Buckeye's ebullient mayor. Orsborn said he understands the state has to be "really careful" with water resources but that the city is exploring "options to keep us going and allow us to continue to grow at the rate that we want to grow."
Buckeye expects to one day contain as many as 1.5 million people, rivaling or even surpassing Phoenix -- the sixth largest city in the US that uses roughly 2bn gallons of water a day -- by sprawling out the tendrils of suburbia, with its neat lawns, snaking roads and large homes, into the baking desert. Arizona's challenging water situation appears a major barrier to such hopes, however. In June, the state announced that new uses of its groundwater have essentially hit a limit, placing restrictions on house building, just a few months after the state lost a fifth of its water allocation from the ailing Colorado River.
There isn't enough water beneath Buckeye to support homes not already being built, Arizona's water department has said. But the city is embarking upon an extraordinary scramble to find water from other sources -- by recycling it, purchasing it or importing it -- to maintain the sort of hurtling growth that continues to propel the US west even in an era of climate crisis. "Personally, my view is that we are still full steam ahead," said Eric Orsborn, Buckeye's ebullient mayor. Orsborn said he understands the state has to be "really careful" with water resources but that the city is exploring "options to keep us going and allow us to continue to grow at the rate that we want to grow."
Hit piece (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm all about sustainability and communities like this are obviously not it. However, importing water is not a novel or unique thing - even Los Angeles does this and they're huge, next to the ocean, and have a mediterranean climate - not desert.
Hell, even the photos in the article were carefully chosen for the given narrative. Muted, washed out colors. You'd think they were taken in the 1970s. Showing only the most depressing sights for the town.
Articles like this undercut their message with their obvious slanting. Why not just state the facts: desert community has no sustainable water plan outside of importing and is overly ambitious / about to suffer massive hubris. By tainting it with this baked in bias it makes me not want to believe the article or agree with its conclusion.
Let the facts speak for themselves "journalist."
It's one thing to import water (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the baked in bias, it's not so much bias as it's trying to tell a long, long story so you'll scroll past many, many ads (especially on mobile). Ever since online ad revenue went to shit years ago websites write long, meandering articles to force you to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the actual meat of any article. So they need a long, winding narrative to pad it all out.
Letting the fact speak for themselves won't fill enough space for the adverts.
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Building out more cities in a desert when we know water is getting increasingly scarce and we are being told that it's only going to get worse isn't just irresponsible, it's probably a real-estate scam.
Definitely seems like a real possibility.
My scam "alarm bells" were certainly ringing when I read their suggestion of getting water from Mexico. Northern Mexico is a desert, where is this mass of excess water going to come from down there?
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Indeed if I were a running a municipality in Northern Mexico about the last thing I'd consider would be any long term agreements to ship water back north. Rather I'd be very worried political pressure to keep America's western mega-cities wet will mean a day will come where not much of the Colorado or Rio make it the border.
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A decade ago or so, we had a cold snap settle over the area, covering Las Cruces, Alamogordo, and El Paso. I'm not sure how far north or east it went. The temperature dropped to -19F. Fortunately there was no other weather associated with it: no wind, no snow. Just damn cold. Up here in Cloudcroft, we're used to it usually dropping below zero in the
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Northern Mexico is a desert, where is this mass of excess water going to come from down there?
I know nothing of the situation but with many mentions of aquifers running dry and/or being contaminated being in the news I'd guess that there's an aquifer somewhere under this desert. There's apparently "rivers" flowing under the Sahara carrying freshwater from somewhere with rain and ends up presumably in the sea at some point. I'm guessing but it can make sense.
What should become apparent is that when these aquifers are tapped for the freshwater it contains that means if they draw water out faster tha
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Heh, I posted and then read the article. Upon reading the article (which I should have done first) I discovered the plan is a desalinization plant in Mexico and to then pipe that water all the way to Arizona so that answers that.
This strikes be as not a great idea as well though as not only is desalinized water expensive but then so is pumping it hundreds of miles uphill. I'd be curious to know what the water bills would look like for people living off this water.
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This strikes be as not a great idea as well though as not only is desalinized water expensive but then so is pumping it hundreds of miles uphill. I'd be curious to know what the water bills would look like for people living off this water.
Water is a fungible commodity so as the price of water from aquifers goes up then it becomes feasible for water to come from desalination. The only real solution to the rising cost of water is to use less of it. Re-reading the article I see that I missed before how there's been successful efforts to lower water use in Arizona over the decades. I've heard of similar successes in other parts of the world. This rarely results in a lowered standard of living, simply more economical use of what is available.
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If I'm interpreting the numbers correctly, Americans could easily use 90% less water than they currently do (100 gallons per day to 10 gallons per day). It wouldn't necessarily be fun, but five minute showers with high pressure low flow shower heads are easily feasible, with perhaps a minute extra if needed to wash conditioner and shampoo out of long hair. Even showering every day could be seen as a luxury, particularly if you choose to live in a desert. Dishes can be washed putting a basin in the sink, scr
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I'm guessing there's a huge load of outstanding bonds/stocks relating to development in this 'town' and with the Colorado River accords fallout last year, the developers are doing everything they can to keep prices up while they quietly unload their paper.
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long, meandering articles
I don't know, this is just a writing style. The New Yorker has been doing this with most of their articles for decades. I don't like it either, but apparently some people do.
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What's hard for me to understand is, why? Wouldn't it be better to develop Kentucky?
Re:Hit piece (Score:4, Interesting)
"how much they are willing to pay", I think you mean how much they are ABLE to pay. And I doubt the rest to the U.S. wants to develop a desert because Arizona has a woodie for unbridled growth. From the article:
"This summer was, globally, probably the hottest that humans have ever experienced. In Phoenix, there were a record 31 consecutive days above 100F (37C) and the seasonal monsoon season was the driest since 1895. It will only get hotter and drier."
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It is likely much better to develop Kentucky but these people won't live in Kentucky.
My question is who do they think is going to move to a place that's so fucking hot and short on water?
Re: Hit piece (Score:2)
"Even trucking in water is 'sustainable,' if uneconomical."
That depends on where the water comes from. If it's sourced from depleting aquifers it certainly is not. A lot of cannabis in northern California depends on water sold illegally by vineyard owners and trucked to the grow.
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just state the facts
has no sustainable water plan outside of importing and is overly ambitious / about to suffer massive hubris. By tainting it with this baked in bias it makes me not want to believe the article
Just the facts eh? Do you have one scrap of evidence to suggest they can't import the water they need? What is overly ambitious, they have been on a massive growth trajectory for quite some time, they have the land, etc.
Talk about bias..
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That's actually what happens when you take photos in harsh sunlight, something there's no shortage of in Buckeye. When I was a beginning photographer, I took a photo of a beautiful cactus on South Mountain in direct sunlight and was disappointed that the colors didn't come out as bright as I remembered.
To make the photos more flattering, the photographer could have taken the photos at Golden and Blu [howtogeek.com]
Re: Hit piece (Score:2)
Every single option will require (Score:3, Insightful)
The power of prayer won’t build a water pipeline. Neither will Tucker Carlson’s talk show or a Trump rally.
Not. Gonna. Happen. Not in that region of the world.
Re:Every single option will require (Score:5, Informative)
Arizona is not, by election results, a 'deeply red' state any more. The invasion of Californians, immigration, etc. have changed that.
But as an actual resident of the state and region, I think Buckeye has figured out they need to act now before all the water is spoken for. Arizona generally requires an assured 100-year water supply to permit the sale of a residence. This is usually acquired by the original builder, granted by the municipality or governing authority the property is located in, and is not ordinarily transferred. This is as cause behind the effective ban on new homes in several West Valley areas, for instance.
The Phoenix metro area will too soon face real water shortages as the Colorado River allocations are further reduced, errors in management cause overuse and less available local sources, and other states (and most certainly Native American tribal nations) claim or just take as much or more water because they can.
The proposed federal plan to manage the Colorado River will fail, California will not abide by it. Then the dominos will fall, Mexico will send more people north due to lack of water, other states will refuse to be the only ones sacrificing, and whoever is at the end of the line will be out of luck.
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The proposed federal plan to manage the Colorado River will fail, California will not abide by it.
If the states upriver of California take all the water they want, literally none is going to reach California.
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>If the states upriver of California take all the water they want, literally none is going to reach California.
How do you propose that is going to be able to happen - extended Civil War?
Re:Every single option will require (Score:5, Insightful)
Arizona is not, by election results, a 'deeply red' state any more. The invasion of Californians, immigration, etc. have changed that.
"Invasion". It's funny we never called it that here in California when we were taking in people from all over the country for well over a century. Mid and Southwestern states are getting awfully snow-flakey over Californians coming to their states. Whenever I hear stuff like this I mostly just think to myself, "I know people actually wanting to live in your state is new for you but get over yourselves"
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That, and if Americans actually knew how dicey their future SS and Medicare will become given the lack of people paying into the system...and the people thinking they are smart by tax scams to defraud the U.S. government.
Tax Gap
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13... [npr.org]
It is now $688 Billion per year of what is owed but not collected.
The projected gross tax gap — made up of failed payments through nonfiling, underreporting and underpayments — doesn't account for late payments or IRS enforcement. In 2021,
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>It's funny we never called it that here in California when we were
>taking in people from all over the country for well over a century.
And *those* people didn't expect California to suddenly do everything as it was done back home, and then block-vote for the policies that created the situation the they fled.
I want a wall built.
On the western border of Nevada.
And our INS would give anyone wanting to pass a one question entrance test: "Is the government the solution to all of your problems?"
If they say
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You talk as if people didnt bring their politics with them when they were coming to California for the last century. Get over yourself and realize your situation isnt at all unique or special and others have certainly handled it better. We are all Americans after all.
And I mean "Your mistake in California."? As if US states have boarder checks between them that can chose who comes in and who doesnt. By that logic the current influx of Californians into Arizona would be "their mistake in Arizona" then.
You do
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We might all be Americans but that's only relevant where we interact with foreign countries
Hahaha, what? The point of that statement is that we all have the exact same rights which means moving any damn state you feel like in this giant country. People crying over out of staters moving to their state are just as big of idiots as people who tell those they have political disagreements with to "get out of my country then". They're all just people caught up in their own self importance with no acknowledgement that this is a free country where we are all entitled to have differences of opinion and li
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Yeah. A lot of people are all about "individualism" until they actually try and fail to deal with other "individualists" doing their thing.
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Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
Within the borders we are vastly different cultures
As a non-US citizen who has visited multiple countries in all continents save Antarctica, lived for extended periods of time in three different countries and visited the US multiple times in multiple states: no you're not. Go see the world.
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Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
I'm not denying any of that. I just don't think that this represents vastly different cultures. Most people in the US have a lot in common, a simple example is "speaking the same language".
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Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
What literally poisoned California is corporatism like allowing PGE to dump hexavalent chromium for decades or to skip maintenance for ninety-nine years.
Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
Or deny reasonable practices for decades. But yes, corporatism is rampant in the US, and California has not escaped it, perhaps embraced it.
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Where do you get that from? As far as I've ever heard people are leaving California because of the high cost of living and that has everything to do with our real estate market being out of control which as far as I know is because our communities just arent authorizing enough housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
Silicon Valley illustrates this the best. New York level housing demands driving modest homes to well over a million dollars meanwhile they wont let anything be built above two or three stori
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I think if you ditch the liberal bashing you're right on point as these problems exist in conservative orange county just as much as any of the liberal areas. People with money are absolutely being catered to over those with less.
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Well for starters when I went to fill up my car where I live in California this morning gas was 5.29, not 7 dollars.
After that, gas is a separate issue. Gas has been more expensive in California since the 70's when we switched to cleaner burning gas that has to be refined separately from the rest of the nations gas. This drives the price up.
This was done because LA, one of our country's most populous cities, resides in what is essentially a giant valley which traps all the city's pollution right there in th
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My point was the cost of living in Cali being higher is not only driven by real estate but also by taxes and regulations.
Yes and as I illustrated by explaining our situation with gas most of this stuff has been on the books for decades where as our housing issues have only been bad for the last 15 years or so.
California has been more expensive than the rest of the country for eons now but not that much more, hence us being an absolute population sponge for well over a century up until only very recently. This recent surge in cost of living is absolutely driven by housing costs as state regulation or taxes have not changed eno
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ohh... an opportunity to get this discussion back on topic!
As far as I've ever heard people are leaving California because of the high cost of living and that has everything to do with our real estate market being out of control which as far as I know is because our communities just arent authorizing enough housing.
We cannot build more housing, because (wait for it....) we do not have enough water.
In my area (central coast of California) we have developers with approved build plans on hold because they can not get the water credits needed to supply the housing they want to build. The state has mandated building more housing, but we still don't have enough water. Our local water district has been paying the state fines for over-pumping from the local river fo
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We cannot build more housing, because (wait for it....) we do not have enough water.
Yes we do. Residential water use for the state is practically nothing relative to farming and industry https://www.ppic.org/publicati... [ppic.org]. . Simply forbidding the growth of animal feed would free up enough water for all the growth we would ever need given that we'll likely stop growing population wise as a nation sometime this century even with immigration.
There may be individual areas of California where their water infrastructure wont support more people and it's not practical to bring surplus water in fro
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You are correct.
If we stopped using 80% of our water supply for agriculture we would have plenty left for other uses. However, thanks to outdated water rights laws, we cant do that. Those laws need to be changed, but some are older than the nation, which makes them difficult to overturn. Also anytime the discussion comes up, they spread FUD about how we will starve if we don't have water for agriculture (when we could simply control it's use in practical ways -not outlaw agricultural use).
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This has nothing to do with California being prone to earthquakes? Or landslides? Wildfires? Or perhaps their shortages of water supplies?
Earthquakes: Humans have long since mastered building in earthquake zones. Just look at cities like Tokyo, massive buildings everywhere right in the middle of one of the most seismically active regions of the world.
Water: Residential use for water makes up only like 10% of the states water usage. If we were even a little smart with our water usage like not growing alfalfa we'd have all the water we need for growth.
Landslides: Are you kidding me?
Fires: The vast majority of our fires are in rural areas. Big f
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That's true, I haven't had to flee a suburban wildfire since 2007. [wikipedia.org] And while the fire technically swept through my brand new neighborhood, nothing burned except a hay bale that was a decoration for Halloween/Thanksgiving, because my neighborhood was built to "shelter in place" standards. So you could say I didn't really "need" to flee that fire, either.
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Currently, it is the other central American countries from which most of the migrants hail. However, that too is driven in part by drought. Now, who might be partly responsible for that...who...I just cannot think of a country...
Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
Drought can hardly be blamed on one country, though China doesn't seem able to give up on coal...
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China has 25 new nuclear power plants, equal to over 26 GWe, under construction.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
China is burning coal because they can buy it cheap from Australia. At some point that supply will be cut off because Australia runs out of coal, China decides to start a war with some neighbor (Taiwan or otherwise, prompting Australia to cut off trade), or any of a number of things that puts pressure on Chinese coal supplies. I read news that China is using coal to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels
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Re: Every single option will require (Score:2)
Joe arpaio was far from perfect
price water for raising cattle same as domestic (Score:2)
It may not solve everything, but in CA 90% of our water goes to farming + raising cattle. Doesn't matter how much water is conserved by consumers, it will won't make more than a 10% dent.
Re: price water for raising cattle same as domesti (Score:2)
Isn't it time in the cities and the homes to get their own water somewhere? Are desalination plants that damn bad?
Re: Western Arizona is Klan Country (Score:4, Insightful)
"The Confederate (get it right, please) sympathizers never left the South."
Sir, you have just proven you know nothing about the West. Have YOU never left the South? Because I've never seen so many Confederate flags anywhere as I have here in Humboldt, where the same families that murdered the local natives are still the big land owners. And don't get me started on Oregon Nazis...
Re: Western Arizona is Klan Country (Score:2)
I don't get to Humboldt very often, but you've not been to Alabama, Mississippi, North or South Carolina, or Georgia lately? They got the flags flying. Mostly as a show of defiance against the righteous DEI crowd. If you poke a redneck, expect a response. And they employ sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole as well as most any people do.
Re: Western Arizona is Klan Country (Score:2)
"They got the flags flying. Mostly as a show of defiance"
You mean as a sign of racism. The Confederate battle flag is explicitly and forever a sign of white supremacy and support for slavery. That's literally what it was made for.
Re: Western Arizona is Klan Country (Score:2)
Yes. But it's not always what it's used for.
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Not always intentionally, you mean.
Re: Western Arizona is Klan Country (Score:2)
That's also true.
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Taxes are a problem only if they have to pay them. When this scheme collapses, they will come crying for the state and federal governments to bail them out. In other words, let everybody else's taxes pay for their water.
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I have insurance more than sufficient to cover my house in a hurricane or other disaster.
When I was in California I had the same mandated earthquake insurance everyone else had which was way fucking ore expensive than my hurricane insurance.
Your point?
Re:Every single option will require (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a specific example go for it.
My cars in California were trash from the shitty debris strewn highways. My electricity was 3x more expensive and went out far too often. You could wait in line for hours at the DMV or get an appointment 2 months out. The FTB is super aggressive and goes after people for the most trivial shit. My kid's school was crap run by semi literate morons. I had to supplement her education at home. My trash was picked up once a week and I could only use the tiny can I had to pay them rent for. Anything not in the can is left behind.
Vs
The roads here are smooth and clean. My electricity is 1/3rd the cost and only goes out during a big storm and briefly at that. I literally walked in to the DMV, was next person in line and got my driver's license and cars registered the same day I got off the plane coming in. There are zero income taxes so not FTB. My property tax is 1/2 as much for a house twice as big. I don't have to teach my kid at home. Her teachers are doing a fine job even if she thinks they're all too strict. My trash is picked up twice a week, recycling one a week, and yard waste once a week. I can put fucking anything on the curb and it just disappears. I left old ikea dressers out there that didn't survive the move and they took them without a peep.
What examples of each do you have?
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Ok yeah, the food in the Bay Area was better than here, no doubt but it isn't horrible here. I'll grant California better food.
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Stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stop it. Stop building cities in the fucking desert.
Specially during a drought.
It's not crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
Water policy is mostly about agriculture and lawns, not people flushing toilets or taking showers. Irrigation water is sold by acre-feet (>300,000 gallons), while home water is billed in 1000 gallon increments. An average American household uses about 10,000 gallons of water a month.
If my numbers are right, it would take ~11kJ of energy to move 1 gallon of water up 1000 ft (not counting the many miles from the Gulf of California where it might be desalinized). If it takes about 10kJ to move the water up the 1000 ft that's needed, then that's less than 0.003kWh per gallon. If a kWh costs $0.16, then the electricity cost of pumping is probably somewhere on the order of $0.48 per 1000 gallons.
Desalinization supposedly costs ~$4 per 1000 gallons, so that's likely the bulk of the cost. Of course, once you get the water up to Arizona, most of it will stay in the system (e.g. water from your shower ends up back in the pipes), so the $4 per 1000 gallons shouldn't mean that consumers pay $4 more for every 1000 gallons they use.
This works out to an increased cost of $20-30/month for an American family. Given the high initial costs of infrastructure to support this project, that's probably a bit low, but clearly this idea isn't too crazy. My silly HOA charges me $200/month for various things I don't use. Asking people for an extra $30/month for new housing to have a reliable water supply in the desert isn't crazy at all.
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And that's insane. A person only needs 50-100 liters of water per day [un.org] for domestic uses, so 10,000 gallons per month serves a household of 12-25 people.
Re:It's not crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that we could all use less water, but it's important to remember that most of the water that we use ends up back in the water supply. When I shower or wash dishes, almost all of that water goes down a drain, heads to a water treatment plant, and then ends up back in the river, lake, etc. When I water my lawn or when a farmer irrigates crops, that water is "lost." So if the average American is taking a long shower and washing their clothes too often, how does that impact the water supply? It doesn't.
The real concern is the energy costs associated with water heating and purification. And even there, it's not too bad compared to other things. As I said in my original comment, water policy is mostly about agriculture and lawns.
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And that's insane. A person only needs 50-100 liters of water per day for domestic uses, so 10,000 gallons per month serves a household of 12-25 people.
How is "basic needs" defined in this case? As I read that this is the bare minimum for survival, and makes certain assumptions on where their food and shelter comes from. What does that mean for sanitation? Does this mean people using a latrine than a flush toilet? Showering/bathing once per week than the American average of six times? (I read that six showers per week is average for Americans somewhere and I have no reason to doubt it.) Does this account for water used to grow food? Water used to gr
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It's defined at: Your guide to use 50 litres of water per day [westerncape.gov.za]. For example, shut off the shower while you lather up, like they do in the Navy.
No, I said "domestic uses".
Read and Learn from your Sci-Fi Friends (Score:3, Interesting)
I dearly wish people would stop trying to turn Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife" from fiction to prophecy (and a shout-out to his short story "The Tamarisk Hunter" which is just as relevant). Go read, people, and stop trying to create an unsustainable dystopia in the desert. And if sci-fi isn't your thing, go read "Cadillac Desert" (heavily referenced in "The Water Knife") and learn more about how we screwed up water management and American West in the first place.
Just because we *can* live (and farm) in a place doesn't make it a good idea ...
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Highly recommend "Cadillac Desert." The book can be a bit dry (pun intended), but it gives a great explanation of western water policy and also serves as a well documented example of graft and corruption in the government bureaucracy.
if water is an issue (Score:2)
....taking it from somewhere else isn't really the solution, is it? Even if you're "paying" for it from someone at a source, what are the rights of the people downstream of that source?
More or less, that's what happened to the Colorado River - everyone and their brother said 'oh there's a ton of water there, we'll just pipe it from the Colorado!'...until whups, the Colorado is oversubscribed and basically vanishes before it hits the sea.
Maybe stop building houses in the desert, is my idea.
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If the source is desalination from the sea/ocean then is anyone being harmed? I don't know if that's their plan or maybe the Mayor of Buckeye is just talking out his ass about Mexican water but I do know by the time the Colorado gets to Mexico there isn't much left so "get water from Mexico" doesn't make ANY sense unless it's desalinated ocean water. And even then it is pretty whacky.
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If the source is desalination from the sea/ocean then is anyone being harmed?
One claim is that the brine that comes from desalination harms wildlife in the sea. With every gallon of water that is free of salt there's a gallon of brine (with brine being just another name for water containing salts) returned to the sea with double the original salt concentration. The sea is quite large so the total salt concentration is effectively unchanged by drawing freshwater from the sea but the claim is that with this localized rise in salt there's damage done to ecosystem.
Maybe there's method
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Good points about the brine and power costs. That only goes further to show that the Mayor is just nuts. I don't see how they're getting 1.5m people living on hot sand with insufficient local water sources.
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>Maybe stop building houses in the desert, is my idea.
What? You mean set limits and have some self control? That is unamerican.
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There's a lot of misunderstanding in this comment.
1.) Colorado River water is mostly used for agriculture, in fact 80% of the water goes to irrigation. There's plenty of water for everyone living in the Colorado River basin to shower and wash clothes.
2.) The Colorado River Compact was created in the 1920s to divvy up the water from the Colorado river. It's not a free-for-all. The problem is that what the government's estimate for the annual flow was too optimistic, so there continues to be fighting about
Drug dealer model? (Score:2)
This sounds like the typical drug dealer model. Give drugs (or water) for free or super cheap to someone (or a community) that doesn't really need it and let them get reliant on it. Then when they are addicted and have no other options charge whatever you can get out of them. What exactly is the plan if/when their city grows to 1.5M people and Mexico wants to charge 10x or 100x the rate?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why they think another 1.4 million people will want to live in such a hot place anyway. The whole thing sounds very whacky nut.
I was in Phoenix and Tucson for a convention in fucking August once (this is how I figured out my new boss hated me). Just the short walk from the car to the hotel front door in the morning before the real heat started was enough that I was drenched in sweat when I got inside. Jfc, I'd never experienced anything like that before or after.
Re: (Score:2)
This sounds like the typical drug dealer model. Give drugs (or water) for free or super cheap to someone (or a community) that doesn't really need it and let them get reliant on it. Then when they are addicted and have no other options charge whatever you can get out of them. What exactly is the plan if/when their city grows to 1.5M people and Mexico wants to charge 10x or 100x the rate?
That sounds like Russia, Europe, and natural gas.
$80million for one acre (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting the wat? In water (Score:2)
Ok, stuff like limit discs and small tank toilets only reduces use by a few percent, and only puts off the need for increasing water supply from growth by a few years.
Better to bite the bullet and get to it. If you don't like the mild expense increase, don't live in the desert.
Thjs has been known for decades, and was even discussed in California when all this panic BS was ladled onto the population. Just bite the bullet and get to it, so you can live better lives instead of cowering.
Right. (Score:2)
Does the HOA for all the new houses specify that each home must have at least one "rolling coal" equipped vehicle?
This has SUCKERS written all over it.
How about not living there? (Score:2)
How about we stop cramming more people into areas where there are no resources to support them. They have to resort to draining what little there is and coming up with wild schemes to pull in resources from remote areas. Just stop trying to builds cities in the desert. If you insist on living there then you have to pay out of your own pocket to have your water trucked in.
Re: (Score:2)
Naa, that would be smart and the US does not do "smart". "Smart" means you have to think, accept some facts and then to give in and look for better ways to do things. That is _weak_! Force your will on nature, no matter how bad an idea that is, that is the real ticket!
I've gotta say it... (Score:2)
Fuck lawns.
This is an opportunity to not do stupid crap like lawns. I rank this right up there for new service-based industries still adopting the tipping model of employee compensation.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm fine with lawns in the desert so long as the people that grow the lawns pay what it costs to get the water there, and the government (or whomever is responsible for the water supply) is actually using the fees responsibly for sustainably bringing in the water.
There's no shortage of water on Earth, 3/4 of the surface of the planet is covered in water that is on average over a mile deep. The problem is that this water is contaminated with salt (and a few other things we might not want in our drinks or on
If 100 miles, then why not 170? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better move away (Score:2)
Some of the upcoming changes due to climate change will make cities that "live on the edge" like this one unsustainable.
Water distrubition (Score:2)
There is no water problem. We need more of this water distribution efforts.
water immigrating from Mexico? (Score:2)
Like mexico is known for excess water supplies?
Maybe they need to desalinate water from the Gulf? Might not be cheap, but at least they are not likely to run out anytime soon.
Re: (Score:2)