Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

The willow is too close to the house.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Everybody saw this coming.

No one could have predicted…

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

You are here: Home / Climate Change / Excellent Read(s): The Water Wars Come to Arizona

Excellent Read(s): The Water Wars Come to Arizona

by | 198 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Rachel Monroe, in the New Yorker, June 2022: “A community near Scottsdale, Arizona, is running out of water. Amid the finger-pointing, the real question is: how many developments will be next?”:

… As the Southwest enters its second decade of megadrought, and the Colorado River sinks to alarmingly low levels, Rio Verde, a largely upscale community that real-estate agents bill as North Scottsdale, though it is a thirty-mile drive from Scottsdale proper, is finding itself on the front lines of the water wars. Some homeowners’ wells are drying up, while others who get water delivered have recently been told that their source will be cut off on January 1st. “It’s going to turn into the Hunger Games,” Harris said grimly. “Like, a scrambling-for-your-toilet-water-every-month kind of thing.” The fight over how best to address the issue is pitting neighbors against one another. “Water politics are bad politics,” Thomas Loquvam, the general counsel and vice-president of EPCOR, the largest private water utility in the Southwest, told me. “You know that saying, ‘Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting’? That’s very true in Arizona.”

The Southwest’s water issues are at a point of crisis. “What has been a slow-motion train wreck for twenty years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told Congress earlier this year. Arizona is one of seven states that, along with parts of Mexico, draw water from the Colorado River, which accounts for about a third of the state’s supply. (In the nineteen-seventies, Arizona built an extensive aqueduct system to channel river water to the central and southern regions of the state, in part to allay fears that it was overtaxing its finite supply of groundwater.) But the agreement divvying up the Colorado’s water was made at a time when flows were higher than they are now. In recent years, states that rely on that supply have had to contend with shortages, and experts predict that the situation is only going to get worse.

The Foothills is a twenty-square-mile community of some two thousand houses and horse farms in Rio Verde. It’s unincorporated, so homeowners don’t pay city taxes, or receive city services, including water. Many homeowners see this as a plus. When I asked the people at Nabity’s house why they opted to live where they do, several replied, enthusiastically and in unison, “No H.O.A.!” Nabity’s house is off an unpaved road, surrounded by acres of brushland, and the property is regularly visited by roadrunners and hawks and, on occasion, a great horned owl. “Sometimes I’ll have a whole row of little baby quails,” she said. “They look like little cottonballs.”

Recently, the downsides have become more visible. “It’s been keeping me up at night,” EPCOR’s Loquvam said. “Multiple nights, actually. I wonder if these people really understand what they were doing when they bought these homes.”…

In 2018, Phoenix, concerned about its own supply, stopped selling water to haulers who serviced New River, an unincorporated community north of the city. Nabity grew worried that Scottsdale might make a similar decision and cut off supply to Rio Verde Foothills. If that happened, the water haulers could look for other sources, but trucking water in from farther away would cost significantly more. And what if other communities also stopped wanting to sell their scarce water to outsiders? Nabity, a real-estate agent, worried that water insecurity could prevent her from selling her home someday. But, when she and others began raising the issue, some of her neighbors accused her of fearmongering. Scottsdale promised to be a good neighbor, they insisted. The Foothills weren’t going to get cut off.

Then, last August, the Department of the Interior issued its first-ever formal water-shortage declaration for the Colorado River. A few months later, Scottsdale became the first city in Arizona to announce that it had entered Stage One of its drought-management plan. (Several other cities have since followed suit.) The city asked Scottsdale residents to decrease water consumption by five per cent. It also informed the water haulers that, starting in 2023, they could no longer buy Scottsdale water to deliver outside city limits—including to the Rio Verde Foothills…

After all the discussions I’d had with Foothills residents about water scarcity, it was disconcerting to drive down the community’s mostly unpaved roads and see dozens of new houses under construction. Despite the ruptures within the community, the one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that there was way too much development in the Rio Verde Foothills. Last year, Maricopa County added more residents than any other county in the country. “Well, yeah, it’s because they’re issuing building permits with no water,” Nabity said. “We are building way beyond our means.”…

 

Whoops, here comes the ‘Find Out’ aftermath to ‘F*ck Around’. The NYTimes does a version of its favorite Cletus Safari, January 2023:

Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door.

Then the water got cut off.

Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. That meant the unincorporated swath of $500,000 stucco houses, mansions and horse ranches outside Scottsdale’s borders would have to fend for itself and buy water from other suppliers — if homeowners could find them, and afford to pay much higher prices…

For residents who put their savings into newly built homes that promised desert sunsets, peace and quiet (but relegated the water situation to the fine print), the turmoil is also deeply personal. The water disruption has unraveled their routines and put their financial futures in doubt.

“Is it just a campground now?” Mr. McCue, 36, asked one recent morning, after he and his father installed gutters and rain barrels for a new drinking-water filtration system…

Last week, Arizona learned that its water shortages could be even worse than many residents realized. As one of her first actions after taking office, Gov. Katie Hobbs unsealed a report showing that the fast-growing West Valley of Phoenix does not have enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area; their development is now in question.

Water experts say Rio Verde Foothills’ situation is unusually dire, but it offers a glimpse of the bitter fights and hard choices facing 40 million people across the West who rely on the Colorado River for the means to take showers, irrigate crops, or run data centers and fracking rigs.

“It’s a cautionary tale for home buyers,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “We can’t just protect every single person who buys a parcel and builds a home. There isn’t enough money or water.”…

Some say they know how it might look to outsiders. Yes, they bought homes in the Sonoran desert. But they ask, are they such outliers? Arizona does not want for emerald-green fairways, irrigated lawns or water parks…

Last week, Arizona learned that its water shortages could be even worse than many residents realized. As one of her first actions after taking office, Gov. Katie Hobbs unsealed a report showing that the fast-growing West Valley of Phoenix does not have enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area; their development is now in question.

Water experts say Rio Verde Foothills’ situation is unusually dire, but it offers a glimpse of the bitter fights and hard choices facing 40 million people across the West who rely on the Colorado River for the means to take showers, irrigate crops, or run data centers and fracking rigs.

“It’s a cautionary tale for home buyers,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “We can’t just protect every single person who buys a parcel and builds a home. There isn’t enough money or water.”…

When our society’s epitaph is written, But I’m entitled!… will be a strong contender.

… On Tuesday evening, about 60 Rio Verde Foothills residents gathered at the city’s Civic Center in an attempt to make officials hear their plea and come to the table. It came on the heels of a letter from state Rep. David Cook, R-Globe, who is also the primary sponsor of the new legislation targeting the city, House Bill 2411.

With no sign of a change of heart from Scottsdale leaders, Cook said it’s time to up the ante.

“I can’t wait and hope and pray that they’ll come to their senses,” he said. “I need to take action now and get these things moving, because if they don’t, these are the alternatives that they could be facing. And I’m going to fight hard.”…

Cook’s bill would make any city providing water to nonresidents liable for fire damages, health problems and attorneys’ fees if officials decide to turn off the taps.

The legislation, which applies to any municipality stopping water service on or after Jan. 1, 2023, also stipulates that a reduction or halt in water supply to nonresidents must be matched by cutbacks or end of water delivery to the mayor and city council members. The policy is directly targeted at Scottsdale, Cook said.

“To watch them treat other Arizonans in this manner ― it’s just not right,” he said…

Part of the question is whether the legislation is enough to crack the stubborn city. If not, Cook’s next piece of policy might be. He plans to introduce a bill that would strip $10 million in state shared revenue from Scottsdale and give it to the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs to address Rio Verde Foothills’ water issue.

“I want a tank of no less than 50,000 gallons placed out there and water provided for fire protection and public consumption,” Cook said. “So, in other words, if Scottsdale doesn’t want to come to the table and help fix the problem that they have created themselves, then at the state level, we’ll just take their money from them … and we’ll solve the problem for those residents and then work toward the long-term solution on our own.”

Reader Interactions

198Comments

  1. 1.

    ian

    ‘Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting’

    When I read that, my mind read the words “Whiskey is for driving”

    I wonder if these people really understand what they were doing when they bought these homes.”…

    Nope.

  3. 3.

    Bill Arnold

    Something something “No Representation Without Taxes!”.
    (As a motto that could get ugly, because of progressive income taxes.)

  4. 4.

    Jharp

    I’ve lived in a Great Lakes state for 63 years.

    And I’m very much into the inch of rain a week.

    Not only does it water the plants but it’s a cleansing thing as well.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    As one of her first actions after taking office, Gov. Katie Hobbs unsealed a report showing that the fast-growing West Valley of Phoenix does not have enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area; their development is now in question.

    Elections have consequences.

    I hope AZ is mature enough not to blame the messenger.

  8. 8.

    karen marie

    @Bill K: That’s an understatement!

    if Scottsdale doesn’t want to come to the table and help fix the problem that they have created themselves

     

    I don’t think he can hear himself.

  9. 9.

    karen marie

    There are several things I’ve never understood about Arizona.  First is, why anyone lives here at all.  It’s a fucking shithole.  Second, why every parking lot in the state doesn’t have solar panels over the parking spaces to provide shade for shoppers and electricity for businesses.  Third, why the canals are open to the heat and blazing sun while who knows how many gallons simply evaporate.

    If anyone who lives anywhere (except Florida) would like to adopt me so I can live somewhere else, I’d be delighted.

  10. 10.

    frosty

    @Math Guy: ​ Seconded. I just finished it – timely and a good read. Next up is Cadillac Desert. I read a lot about California water but somehow skipped over this one.

  11. 11.

    PJ

    “I deliberately built a house in the middle of the desert, I don’t want to pay taxes for water and other infrastructure, but someone else should be required to give me all the water I want!”

    A big part of the right wing mindset is on display here.

  12. 12.

    RSA

    I first became aware of water rights in the southwest when I read The Milagro Beanfield War (1974), which was later turned into a movie (1988). The key event that starts everything off? Illegal irrigation of a beanfield. These issues have been simmering for decades, and I thought the Scotsdale situation would have happened much sooner.

  14. 14.

    Jaybird

    Cadillac Desert is possibly the best book I’ve ever read. I’ve given away I have no idea how many copies over the years – I literally keep a copy on our bookshelf for giving away

  16. 16.

    Math Guy

    Off topic, but the open thread posted after this one has just disappeared. Is it my iPad or did something go wrong?

  17. 17.

    delphinium

    Boo fucking hoo, there has been water issues in the West for decades now and it’s their own fault for not paying attention (I lived in Tucson for a several years as a kid and even back then they had water restrictions). Guess they can use all the money they saved from not paying city taxes or HOA fees to buy their own water. And if Cook’s next piece of policy doesn’t include making these Rio Verde folks pay city taxes in order to get water then it should be DOA.

  21. 21.

    scav

    Ah, the sight of True Pioneering Freedom Lovers demanding their self-levitating bootstraps be delivered, gratis, NOW! Chop Chop tax-paying scum.

  23. 23.

    satby

    Everyone I knew who moved to AZ (warning: anecdata) is basically a RW IGMFY asshole who crowed about the beautiful weather and the lower taxes since they moved from “Hellinois”. No sympathy from me; it was known in the 1970s that all that population density wouldn’t be sustainable.

  24. 24.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    This past summer NYC had a bit of a drought, and I discovered why people like to farm in the desert.

    Because it’s easy. If the only plants that get water are the ones you actually water while it’s sunny every day, everything you water grows really well, and there are no weeds, few pests, few mosquitoes, no mildrew, etc.  My roses never looked better or flowered more and I didn’t even need to spray them.  Organic farming is as easy as any other kind.

    It’s pure greed & laziness all the way down with these people.

  27. 27.

    Jeffg166

    The population of the entire south west is unsustainable. Yet people continue to move there.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    I hope AZ is mature enough not to blame the messenger.

    LOL. No. Never.

    Up & down the 99 in California’s Central Valley there are huge signs blaming Nancy Pelosi for the drought.

  29. 29.

    evap

    @karen marie:  My best friend lives in Tucson and loves it.  She gets all electricity from solar power and even puts some back into the system at times.  She has a small garden with fruit trees and some veggies and uses gray water (from the washing machine, etc.) to water it all.   The weather is unpleasant several months a year, but in the fall and spring it’s just beautiful.   And Tucson (like Atlanta) is a island of blue in a sea of mostly red.

  30. 30.

    Scout211

    @Math Guy: No, it’s not your device. There was an open thread. My guess is that WaterGirl removed her open thread when she realized that AL had posted this thread. Hopefully, it will appear later today.

  31. 31.

    Jeffg166

    @evap: I have friends living in Tucson. It’s sits on top of its own aquifer. They are in pretty good shape. That said, water conservation is still something they practice daily. My one friend has said when his husband dies he’s moving back east. He sees the writing on the wall.

  33. 33.

    Almost Retired

    Jeez, I never thought anything would make me feel sorry for Scottsdale – a city who’s economy appears to be entirely based on giving each other pedicures and Botox injections.

    But the absurdity of the proposed legislation is gobsmacking.

    An article in the Guardian’s Cities Series described Phoenix as the world’s most unsustainable city.  Seems about right – mix a drought with avaricious libertarians and you’ve got trouble in River(less) City.

  35. 35.

    jonas

    So Scottsdale isn’t terribly enthusiastic about having to sell scarce water resources to a far-off community that doesn’t pay taxes for any infrastructure or maintenance, so these people have gone and paid instead for a state rep who will have the government essentially steal the water from Scottsdale and give it to his constituents? Roger that.

  36. 36.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The South West would be a paradise if wasn’t for all the damn East Coaster and their crap ideas. Buy a place in a near desert/desert, call the natural landscape ugly,  landscape their dream house so “it’s just like home” with a triple canopy Forrest with lush green lawn, then scream about the water bill and their house burning down in a brush fire every fall.  Then get flooded out when it does rain because the land the local yokels were too dumb to build on turns out to be dry creek bed.

  38. 38.

    kindness

    Libertarian ‘I Got Mine’ mindset is easy when everything is handed to you on a platter you refuse to recognize.  Butthurt Libertarians finding out what life is really like when it’s their shit hitting the fan….priceless.  I wish I could enjoy their despair & hypocrisy but I somehow don’t.  They’re just sad selfish sacks of offal.

  42. 42.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Jharp: I lived in Phoenix for a few years and I loved it; but frankly living here in northeast Ohio close to some of Earth’s largest reserves of fresh water seems like a good deal; winter blech notwithstanding.

  44. 44.

    PsiFighter37

    This is just teeing up what will be the bigger fights to come over the fate of Phoenix itself (including Scottsdale), Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City within my lifetime. Barring some sort of weather turnaround, akin to what happened to Cape Town (they have gotten very good rains since nearly running out of water in 2017 and now have fully full reservoirs again), I don’t see how those towns don’t run out of water. Utah makes water stupidly dirt cheap and requires lawns to be kept up, while the Colorado River simply keeps dwindling. It strikes me that a compact drawn up a century ago under completely different circumstances is the best way to approach water management in these times

    I would say that I am worried about California as well, but at least there’s sane (if not necessarily the most competent) people in charge, so if push comes to shove, the state will figure out something. I am looking forward to visiting in early March and am hopefully there’ll be some superbloom to see. I last saw it in 2017, and it was a sight for sore eyes after how dry the state had been in the years before.

  47. 47.

    Scout211

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: And you forgot the folks from the Midwest who flocked to Arizona many decades ago to escape the environment that was causing their severe allergies and asthma only to start planting their yards and gardens with the very same plants, trees, shrubs and grasses.

    Not only more water needed, but now there is no escaping the pollen.

  52. 52.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Scout211: Well, there is also the local grass to the SW that’s pollen is basically ground up glass, and Valley Fever for those with respiratory issues.

    But the whole thing  of “I want my house, just like the home I grew up in!” is just insane.

  54. 54.

    SuzieC

    Heh Heh.  Scottsdale is a mega Republican city full of mini-mansions in gated communities.  From here in wet, rainy Ohio I will watch with interest as these R communities start fighting each other.

  55. 55.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: Indeed, as the poem goes

    ” My name is Baud!mandias, Dude of Dudes; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and kick back!”

  56. 56.

    RepubAnon

    @Bill K: Funny how Republicans aren’t getting behind legislation to stop construction of new homes in areas without a sufficient water supply. By an odd coincidence, those developers are also big Republican donors.

  57. 57.

    hells littlest angel

    I wonder how many of these dumbasses who want to live in suburban ease in the middle of a desert are also climate change deniers.

     

    I’ll give them this: HOAs are by and large shitty.

  58. 58.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    As one of her first actions after taking office, Gov. Katie Hobbs unsealed a report showing that the fast-growing West Valley of Phoenix does not have enough groundwater to support tens of thousands of homes planned for the area; their development is now in question.

    Wow.  Hiding that would have been crazy!  Who was sitting on that information before Katie Hobbs, the previous governor?

    That would be as stupid as lying about having a vasectomy – it’s fairly certain that the truth will come out, and it won’t be pretty.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    Any time a politician with (R) following his/her name does “something about” water, a clusterfuck inevitably follows. They always, always believe that water is being withheld by somebody nefarious ([D] following name) and it can be fixed by taking it back. No water to begin with? As if!

    IDK much about Arizona water so dug a little into the Central Arizona Project–their Colorado River allocation–to find out. Interesting that they are junior to all other states on the system, the tribal setasides, and that we’re not talking about a whole lot of water (1 MAF in 2022).

    Service area map, showing federal and non-fed service.

    I found Rio Verde in this document that came from the office of Interior Secretary James Watt (remember him?). The 1983 record of decision has them inked in for 812 acre-feet. Don’t spend that all at once, guys.

  60. 60.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @different-church-lady: And then when things get fixed they immediately go right back to fucking around.

    Which is literally what is happening right now in the SW. War Wars were the defining thing about the SW until the government big water projects ended all that. Now that’s slid out of living memory the current crop of self made assholes are doing it all over again.

    I am also at lot of the boozos in Arizona look at California and think, “well if the damn libertards can manage it, we can in here TRUE America” and ignore California has a lot of diverse water sources and not just one river.

  68. 68.

    trollhattan

    @hells littlest angel: Water where you want it, no water where you don’t. Now, is that so hard? (Typed while 1. the rain has finally stopped, 2. river levels are dropping, 3. severe drought designation has been removed. Thanks at long last, weather.)

  69. 69.

    delphinium

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think it is region bashing to point out that people do research on a place before they move there. It has been in the news quite a lot over the years about the drought conditions in the West. So if you are going to move there, be aware of it instead of expecting other people to compensate for your poor decision.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @delphinium: Yup. Not terribly different than finding Houston had allowed tens of thousands of homes to be built on a floodplain after Harvey drowned them.

  73. 73.

    Miss Bianca

    When my Pal D was looking to relocate from Atlanta to the mountain west, he told me that he had been looking at a place in Gardner, CO (tiny little hamlet south of here), that was everything he wanted – gorgeous, huge house, 65 acres, backed up onto then-owner Vidal Sassoon’s bison ranch, so no near neighbors except bison…heaven on earth, for a hermit-y Libertarian type, except…

    No water.

    Had a huge cistern for storage, but no well. He offered a well digger 15k to start drilling, the guy told him, “Save your money. There’s just no water in that location. You can drill down to 1400 feet, and there won’t be any water.”

    He took a hard pass on the place and bought a house with a well-producing well instead.

    Now it appears that Walsenburg, the biggest local city where Gardner can get water from, is cracking down on who can get water from its city wells.

    It’s not just Arizona, folks. It’s gonna get ugly.

  76. 76.

    hells littlest angel

    @trollhattan:

     

    Not hard to conceive of, certainly. I think weather control — being able to schedule gentle rainstorms as needed — was assumed 100 years ago to be an inevitable feature of humanity’s glorious future.

  79. 79.

    delphinium

    @Miss Bianca: ​
    Yes, and in some states (believe Colorado is one of them), it can be illegal to have cisterns on your property to collect rain water. So for many folks, that isn’t even an option for water.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @Miss Bianca: Unbelievably, California was the last state to regulate its groundwater basins and in the meantime, big ag kept drilling deeper, larger wells that sucked the easy water out for irrigation while depleting aquifers for all. Jerry Brown signed the SGMA legislation in 2014. By 2040, all basins must be managed sustainably. I’m guessing a whole lot of almonds are going to be ripped out by then.

  86. 86.

    Miss Bianca

    @delphinium: Oh, no, that used to be the case, but a law was passed a few years ago that allows Coloradans to collect rain water.

    But yeah – that shit used to be illegal when I moved here! Not that the water police was actually cracking down on anybody’s rain barrels, but still…I remember how mind-blowing I found that, being a Midwestern gal who grew up on the Great Lakes – “what do you mean, it’s illegal to catch water falling out of the sky?? What do you mean, ‘Already allocated?’ ‘Senior water rights v junior water rights?’ Da fuq is all that?”

    ETA: Though now the state is cracking down on “illegal ponds” – that is, ponds without water rights.

  87. 87.

    Kelly

    Even in famously rainy Oregon water is a growing problem. Water is a big problem around Klamath Falls, Oregon. It’s on the dry eastern side of the state. Natives have reclaimed some water rights, environmental concerns have gathered in some more of the Klamath drainage that farmers have been using. The wealthy bore deeper wells and the poor folks wells run dry.

    Even here in the rather wet western Cascade foothills there’s less water than we’re used to. Willamette drainage reservoirs that filled reliably for several generations fail to fill every 3~4 years starting about 10 years ago.

  88. 88.

    Scout211

    It’s California, not Arizona: Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more 

     

    Then there was the water itself, contaminated with chemicals from agriculture runoff and treated with so much chlorine that it turned his family’s black clothing gray in the wash. His daughter and her baby live in the house, and Cuevas’s wife only bathes her granddaughter in the bottled water they receive from the county for drinking.

    Cuevas is not alone; the entire town of under 300 people faces the same water crisis. In many rural parts of the state, faucets and community wells are running dry after years of drought and heavy agriculture use pulls more water from the same groundwater residents use.

    One local nonprofit told CNN that about 8,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley need thousands of gallons of hauled water just to keep their taps flowing – and that number is growing.
    . . .
    Multiple people CNN spoke to for this story said McCarthy and his office don’t often engage on this issue in the district, especially compared with neighboring members of Congress. And they wish he would do more with his power in Washington – especially now that he holds the speaker’s gavel.

    McCarthy proposed an amendment this past summer to set up a grant program to help connect small towns like Tooleville with larger cities that have better water systems. The measure passed the House but died in the Senate. But as more and more wells go dry, McCarthy has made a point to vote against other bills addressing climate change and drought, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

    “In my experience, he has never engaged with us on any of these kinds of emergencies,” said Jessi Snyder, the director of community development at local nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, who focuses on getting hauled water to entire communities that have gone dry.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Phys.org – Ohio bans invasive Callery pear trees:

    Ohio this year has banned the sale of Callery pear trees that are crowding out native wild plants in many forests across the country.

    Ohio is the first of several states taking steps to eradicate the once-popular ornamental trees, known for their white spring blossoms. A similar ban will go into effect inSouth Carolina starting in 2024.

    In 2018, Ohio gave landscapers, growers, and nurseries five years of notice that the ban was coming so they could replace their inventories without causing financial harm.

    University of Cincinnati biologist Theresa Culley said once established, pear trees are hard to remove. UC manages a southwest Ohio forest known as the Harris Benedict Nature Preserve, where Callery pear trees are sprouting in clearings.

    “Seedlings of pear trees are now also showing up in the forest understory. They are very difficult to remove because they have a very long taproot,” Culley said.

    Culley said the pear trees grow quickly and tolerate a variety of wet, dry, sunny or shady conditions.

    “They’re extremely hardy. They can grow pretty much anywhere. They have abundant flowers that attract all kinds of pollinators so they end up with abundant fruit that birds disperse,” said Culley, who is head of UC’s Department of Biological Sciences.

    […]

    We continue to change the planet in all kinds of ways, in most cases without understanding the ramifications. I like to think that we’ll begin to learn quicker.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Wag

    Here’s a link to another source of depleted aquifers in Arizona. A Saudi Arabian conglomerate has bought farmland west of Phoenix, it is rapidly draining the aquifers and using the water to grow alfalfa. They then ship the alfalfa back to Saudi Arabia to feed cattle for the local market. And people loose homes are reliant on the aquifer are losing their water at a rapid rate.
    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/03/when-saudi-arabia-comes-to-town-and-buys-all-your-water/

  92. 92.

    James E Powell

    @Almost Retired:

    Jeez, I never thought anything would make me feel sorry for Scottsdale – a city who’s economy appears to be entirely based on giving each other pedicures and Botox injections.

    And golf. I think Scottsdale has like 50 golf courses. They all need a lot of water.

  94. 94.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Who built the golf courses and suggested that people move there?

    Probably the local Chamber of Commerce types, the local movers and shakers who had most to gain from an influx of suckers.  Isn’t that sort of thing pretty much the same everywhere?

    Not sure what your point is.

  95. 95.

    eclare

    @delphinium:   When I moved from Atlanta to Memphis about twenty years ago, I did it mainly to be near my aging parents, but I also looked at the water supply, long term. Memphis has very good water from a very big source, and usually gets decent rain.  At the time GA was fighting with FL and AL over water.

  96. 96.

    CaseyL

    In other precipitation news, it is snowing right now in Seattle.  No telling if it’ll stick, or the weather warm up enough to turn it to rain.  Temps are supposed to get into the 40s… but then, the forecast said nothing about snow, so who knows.

    I decided some time ago that I’d rather live where there was too much water than too little.  That decision knocked the SW right out of contention, which is a pity, because I quite like New Mexico.

    I was shocked to learn a few years back that much of Washington state has been in a decades-long drought.  That hasn’t been the case in King County, other than a short period of minimal water rationing about 30 (?) years ago.

  97. 97.

    PsiFighter37

    @Scout211: Not surprising. The town where I lived for 4.5 years in the early 1990s and where my grandmother lives (and is going to eventually pass given her later-stage dementia) is part of Kev’s district. It’s in the middle of the desert, and the drastic changes to the (artificially-supported) vegetation from when I was there 30 years ago is kind of crazy. The water fountain by one of the town centers was completely ripped out at some point. Many homes (and the sidewalks that are not part of anyone’s property) have been xeriscaped. Once a lawn is ripped out, you can never put grass back in. The common lawn around the community center and pool is an absolutely ugly shade of brown and yellow most of the time. When I was there as a young boy, it was as green as could be.

    My main hope is that my mother does not waste time when affairs truly need to be wrapped up and taken care of, and her first priority is selling my grandmother’s house as soon as possible. I do not see how that town doesn’t become a ghost town in my lifetime, even if there is relatively significant armed forces activity that would always support a presence. Without water, there’s no way it happens.

  98. 98.

    PsiFighter37

    @CaseyL: I had heard WA State was in a drought, and during a weeklong stay in Seattle in mid-August, I was quite surprised to find lots of yellowing grass. But a retired native who was in our foursome at a public golf course said that always happens during the drier summer months.

  99. 99.

    karen marie

    @OzarkHillbilly: Oh, hahaha.  I just got it — “do you do windows.”   I first thought you were asking, in effect, do I like spaces with windows – another bone of contention as my current apartment has only one window in the bedroom and a slider in the living room.   I’ve never lived in a state where homes have so little view outside.

    As to your actual question – outside, sadly, no – I’m too old to be climbing ladders, but inside?  With the right equipment, absolutely!

    I also bake and hand-wash dishes like nobody’s business.

  101. 101.

    PsiFighter37

    @James E Powell: I visited a client in Palm Desert, and when I flew in, I saw the incredible number of golf courses om the area. He mentioned that it has some crazy number (like over 125 golf courses) in the Palm Springs metro area. That said, to be fair, it’s the only meaningful patch of green that I saw flying in. He did say that there’s also known water supplies that can satisfy demand for over a century, but I have no idea whether that’s true or not. And certainly spending it on watering an overabundance of golf courses seems stupidly wasteful.

  104. 104.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Reason number 167 why we did not stay in SoCal after we retired from the military.  We could see the coming water wars back then in 2000.  IT’s not a drought, it’s the new normal.  And ya gotta love people who want low/no taxes and also want infrastructure and utilities/services. Fucking mind boggling.  I am currently debating when we need to sell (near/coastal Connecticut)and move closer to our daughter in Central NY state…

    If you want to scare yourself read 2 books, When Rivers run dry- Water: The defining crisis of the 21st century  and With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change   both by Fred Pearce.

  106. 106.

    StringOnAStick

    I got my undergraduate environmental geoscience degree in western Colorado in the early 1980’s.  Lack of water in the growing West was a common topic in my classes, as was global climate change due to fossil fuel use.  I think more than half the people in my classes read Cadillac Desert, and an engineer I met after grad school went on to work on the huge modelling project the USBR (or whatever their name is now) was developing to deal with allocation of the Colorado river; they said that the meetings with the state representatives were extremely contentious, and that was in the mid 1990’s.  This problem has been known about by scientists in the science and policy making agencies for decades now, but developer money and power keeps winning, until we have now reached this inevitable point.  That the fastest growing county in the US is the one where the water shortage has just hit critical levels is just a little too on the nose.

  107. 107.

    raven

    The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted Wednesday to shut down oyster harvesting in Apalachicola Bay through the end of 2025.

    The agency voted unanimously for the closure what will deal a blow to an area that historically produced 90% of the state’s oysters and 10% of the nation’s.

    It’s a last-ditch effort to restore the bay’s oyster population, which has declined dramatically thanks to water flow issues and overharvesting.

    The commission issued an emergency order in July shutting down oyster harvesting on Aug. 1 and said Wednesday that if conditions improve more quickly, they may end the closure sooner.

    The industry has struggled for years, in large part due to a drain on freshwater flowing into the bay. Atlanta uses the water upstream as a water supply.

  108. 108.

    CaseyL

    @PsiFighter37:

    Well, August has historically been the one and only month in Seattle that you could pretty much count on it being hot and not rainy.  And grass is usually pretty sad and brown by then, unless it’s being watered.

    Now that we’re falling ever deeper into climate change, the last couple of summers in Seattle and environs have been brutal (and will continue to be from now on, dammit; thanks for nothing, climate change deniers).  So the grass will continue to not be green over the summer.

  109. 109.

    lowtechcyclist

    Forty years ago this summer, I did a cross-country trip that was basically a big loop around the Western part of the country. One of the things that struck me at the time was how arid most of the Western half of the country was. When I got back home to Virginia, the humidity I’d been used to all my life suddenly felt like a wet blanket, but I was glad to be back in a place where stuff grew everywhere all by itself because there was rarely any shortage of water coming out of the sky. And it made me aware that one of the reasons all those places with beautiful landscapes out there were thinly populated was that there wasn’t a lot of water.

    So that’s colored my view of the interior West ever since. And of course, in recent years, it’s been clear that climate change is coming, and it’s a real possibility that the Southwestern desert may reach all the way to Kansas before I leave this mortal coil. I’ve got little sympathy for people who moved there without doing any research on any of this, especially if they’re GQP climate deniers. They have chosen to close their eyes to reality in order to own the libs, and it’s biting them on the ass. As the saying goes, time wounds all heels.

  110. 110.

    trollhattan

    @StringOnAStick: One of many things that stick in my brain from Reisner, is their using an anomalously wet period for the Colorado Basin study, then designed the system to store and deliver that amount of water–water that is present every couple of decades or so. It’s like having a U-Haul for delivering Door Dash.

  113. 113.

    Delk

    From Google:

    Is Rio Verde AZ a nice place to live?

    Rio Verde is in Maricopa County and is one of the best places to live in Arizona. Living in Rio Verde offers residents a suburban rural mix feel and most residents own their homes. Many retirees live in Rio Verde and residents tend to be conservative. The public schools in Rio Verde are highly rated.

  114. 114.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: It would be a terrible shame if Squeaker’s constituents get pissed at him about all the bullshit stunts they have planned instead of, you know, legislating.

    And then vote him out of office.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Baud: That’s Klain, and no, he still hasn’t called me!

    I’m hoping Ron gave Neera my number, but I bet he didn’t.

  120. 120.

    StringOnAStick

    @trollhattan: That fact about allocation of the Colorado river stuck in my mind too.  My old friend who moved on to the USBR said that in her on-boarding group, the speaker said (in so many carefully parsed words) that all were encouraged to read Cadillac Desert, that the portrayal of the agency was harsh but essentially true.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I’m a little surprised, though I was thinking the other day that there is often some WH turn-over after midterms. I wonder if he needs to rest up for the re-election campaign. I think when Symone Sanders left there was speculation she’s be back for the ’24 cycle.

  123. 123.

    azlib

    I live in Scottsdale and I hope the city will not give in to the Rio Verde Foothills extortion.

    However, there are some misconceptions about Scottsdale. The city has a pretty aggressive water conservation program. Scottsdal will pay $2 per square foot of lawn replaced with Xeriscape landscaping. Grass takes a lot of water to maintain. They also have a program to replace irrigation timers with smart timers and rebate the cost of the timers. I have two installed at my home and they work quit well as they talk to the local weather station to adjust the amount of watering and turn themselves off when it rains.

    The City will have to get more aggressive since it gets 70% of its water from the Colorado River through the Central Arizona Project. About 40% of the water is used for outdoor irrigation. So cutting down on that use is a priority. Domestic water which flows to the treatment plants is recycled for outdoor irrigation which includes most of Scottsdale’s golf courses. Other recreational areas are also irrigated with this recycled water including baseball and soccer fields as well as parks.

    Keep in mind that 80% of the water used in Arizona goes for agriculture. Only 20% is domestic urban use. Both sides of that equation will have to be better at conservation. It is estimated Arizona will have to not use around 2 million acre feet of water due to the drought this year. And that cutback is just to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead at minimal levels for hydro power generation and also to provide flow through the Grand Canyon to maintain its natural environment. I suspect if the drought continues, that Lake Powell will be gone or at dead pool levels within 5 years.

    The current drought is very serious and it is projected to get worse. Hopefully, more people will realize the seriousness of the problem we are facing and enact constructive measures to help us deal and live with the ongoing drought situation.

  125. 125.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud: Not entirely surprising. Honestly, it’s more surprising that there hasn’t been more Cabinet turnover. I hope that Biden & team can keep that at a minimum so that Schumer can spend virtually all of the floor time the next two years getting nominees confirmed to positions of importance. I also hope, in particular, that Lisa Cook gets reconfirmed swiftly to a full 14-year term as Fed governor in 2024, and that if either Bowman or Waller (the other two Republican governors outside of Powell) retire early, that they fill those seats swiftly as well. Obama was ridiculously – and frustratingly – absent in filling those seats when he had the chances. The seat held by Waller, for example, was vacant from March 2014 throughout the rest of Obama’s presidency.

    I know Schumer had to deal with a 50-50 Senate for the first two years, but now that Dems have an outright majority, they need to get permanent heads in places that have had acting ones (like the OCC, ambassador to India, etc.) much quicker. And they need to ditch nominees who have no shot. I still don’t get why Eric Garcetti got a renomination to be ambassador to India.

  128. 128.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud: I doubt it. Manchin would likely still be a no, which means that Sinema (or any other Dem) could gum up the works. At this point, I would hope that the Biden team focuses on nominating people who won’t unnecessarily waste floor time, even if it’s for vacuous reasons like mean tweets.

  129. 129.

    cmorenc

    @Bill K:

    Rep Cook isn’t merely blaming the wrong people, but his bill that harshly sanctions a municipality for refusing to supply suburban developments outside city limits (and taxes etc) – will accelerate and compound the water supply shortage, and also would encourage further irresponsible development with insufficient water resources to support them.  And meantime, developers will have taken the money from selling the houses and run.

    This is irresponsible stipid writ large.

  131. 131.

    Citizen Alan

    @Mike in NC:  How bad is the situation in Utah compared to the rest of the Southwest? I just had an interview for a job in Utah that went really great, but I didn’t think to ask “will your city become a desert before I’m old enough to retire in 14 years?”

  133. 133.

    Citizen Alan

    @kindness: I really want someone to write a sequel to Atlas Shrugged about how, fifty years after the Apocalypse that John Galt triggered out of sheer spite, desert nomads find the remains of Galt’s Gulch and learn that everyone who moved there was dead of starvation within six months. John and Dagny were drinking their own urine before they resorted to cannibalism and cooked and ate Midas Mulligan.

  134. 134.

    Gin & Tonic

    @PsiFighter37: At a conference years ago I had beers with an engineer from the Coachella Valley Water District. This was over 20 years ago, and even then he said all the golf course and hotel green space irrigation was with waste water. This is that whole Palm Springs and Palm Desert area.

  136. 136.

    Miss Bianca

    @cmorenc:

    @Bill K: So, if this bill passes, can’t the Governor veto it? I mean, it’s pretty outrageous to imagine that a state can force a municipality to supply water to a development that doesn’t pay any taxes or any other infrastructure costs.

  138. 138.

    Miss Bianca

    @Citizen Alan: I want the sequel to Atlas Shrugged that answers the question, “so, because no peasants were allowed to be part of the great migration of great brainz to Galt’s Gulch, did they form an anarcho-capitalist commune to deal with the pressing question of who cleans the toilets and cooks? Or did Dagny find that she was expected to do all the chores?”

  139. 139.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus: Seemed to me that delphinium was blaming the East Coasters and Midwesterners who moved there for being in the predicament they now find themselves in.

    Makes sense to me.

  141. 141.

    Michael Bersin

    @ian:

    “…I wonder if these people really understand what they were doing when they bought these homes….”

    The should have. Caveat emptor.

    I grew up in Arizona. Water, water shortages, and unchecked growth and development have been part of the cautionary conversation for over 40 years.

    Tucson used to rely exclusively on groundwater. With population growth comes demand and the water table sinks. In the old neighborhood I grew up in the city well was just down the alley from our house. Almost fifty years ago, because of extensive groundwater pumping and the dropping water table the city had to extend the depth of that neighborhood well. The process involves using a churn drill. It took a while.

    On the southwest side of Tucson, if I recall correctly, a corporation which used industrial solvents dumped the used material on the ground. That percolated down to the water table and persistant and growing pumping pulled a plume of contamination to the east over the years, making more of the wells (and potential supply) useless.

    Long after I had moved away my parents had downsized to a different neighborhood. City water, in its infinite wisdom, managed to install pumps with mercury in their bearings in a handful of wells. It just so happened that the bearing in the pump for the well feeding my parent’s newer home failed, contaminaiting the well with mercury. The city shut down that well permanently, rerouted the well supply to the neighborhood, provided blood testing for the residents served by the contaminated well (for a period of time), and paid to replace everyone’s hot water heaters (apparently it’s impossible to clean mercury out of a hot water heater).

    So yeah, people in Arizona are acutely aware of water issues. Those who aren’t are morons.

    The common theme to these anecdotes? Money. What’s more important than a clean and accessible water supply? Promoted development and the profit it generates for developers, corporate manufacturing profit – just dump that toxic crap on the ground, and cheap-ass public procurement because when the bearing fails in twenty years “I’ll be long since retired and it won’t be my problem.”

  142. 142.

    Shalimar

    @Cameron: Most of Florida would be uninhabitable because of mosquitos if it wasn’t for extensive spraying.  They breed in still, fresh water.

  143. 143.

    delphinium

    @lowtechcyclist: My point was that grown-ups (regardless of where they are from) should at the very least do some basic research and understand that a desert is naturally a place without a lot of water. And if you decide to move there, understand that the water supply is not infinite and others besides you need water too. So in this specific case, maybe high-fiving each other because you don’t pay city taxes but yet expect a city to provide your water indefinitely was probably not the smartest plan. So rather than whining about it, come up with a contingency plan where you actually have to pay for what you need, rather than still expecting to get it for free.

    This doesn’t apply to those people who were paying their taxes and utilities cost in other areas of the state.

  144. 144.

    Jay

    @Gin & Tonic:

    if you have sunshine, space, a greenhouse, and gravity, you can turn raw sewage, (much worse than grey water), into potable water and fertilizer via a series of settling ponds, plants and bacteria.

  145. 145.

    Miss Bianca

    @Michael Bersin: There’s a whole section in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about why she decided to move away from Tucson, an area that she loved, back to family-roots property in KY – no surprise, water, the lack or abundance thereof, and the Southwest’s cavalier attitude to the lack or abundance thereof, was one of the principal motivators.

  146. 146.

    Kelly

    @Gin & Tonic:

     I think purifying it to potability is a lot costlier than sprinkling it onto a golf course.

    Purifying to potability is way cheaper and simpler than increasingly common desalination

  147. 147.

    Origuy

    I was in Anza-Borrego State Park last weekend. It’s California’s largest state park, a big chunk of the desert between San Diego and the Salton Sea. It surrounds the town of Borrego Springs, which has a few golf courses, but even those are mostly desert. You don’t see many grass lawns there. I stayed in a vintage Airstream in a small development. They’ve gotten a fair amount of the rain that has drenched California this year. There were already a few small flowers in bloom. By March, it should be spectacular. Some great hiking without a huge amount of climb. Recommended

    ETA. Borrego Springs gets all of its water from an underground aquafer, which is being depleted.

  148. 148.

    Barbara

    @Citizen Alan: ​It might depend on where in Utah you would be. My understanding is that western Utah — the St. George area — is growing like gangbusters and is having a hard time with water supply issues.

    The issues in the west re water are somewhat different from climate issues faced by the Outer Banks and other coastal locations, in that many homeowners (unbelievably) can sustain the economic loss of a home eventually becoming uninhabitable because of the draw of tourism. Eventually the costs of maintaining infrastructure will be too high but it won’t be as dramatic as running out of water.

    How can anyone move to Arizona or Utah and not know that water availability is a huge issue?

  149. 149.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kelly: Whatever. Living in New England I have plenty of water, and my knowledge of this subject has already been exhausted.

  150. 150.

    Citizen Alan

    @Barbara: It’s Salt Lake City. I have also had second round interviews in Houston (flooding, Texas GOP) and Fresno (water shortages, Kevin McCarthy)

  151. 151.

    delphinium

    @Omnes Omnibus: In case it wasn’t clear, was blaming the people in this specific instance who moved to a desert (regardless of where they were originally from). They should have understood-as it is widely known-that water has been an issue in parts of the West for decades. And for them to expect to indefinitely get water from a city where they pay no taxes, was not sustainable nor realistic.

  152. 152.

    Kelly

    @Gin & Tonic: I’ve always lived in Oregon where tap water is always great to OK. Made the mistake of drawing a glass of tap water for a drink in Jerusalem, Israel. Yuck

  153. 153.

    Jay

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I find it very interesting. It’s basically a bioengineered indoor marsh that turns sewage into potable water. If you don’t need it for drinking, you can put it back into nature.

  156. 156.

    cain

    @PsiFighter37: ​
     
    There is going to be a reckoning there – and it’s going to be hard because of entitlement. They actually will have to negotiate. Of course, if they elect clowns – they’ll only get a clown show.

  157. 157.

    cain

    @Barbara: How can anyone move to Arizona or Utah and not know that water availability is a huge issue?

    I think it’s because they are from the “God will provide” spectrum of Christianity.

    They have no lived in experience about these kind of things. Everything comes with a price eventually. Building without any regard to what the infrastructure can provide is going to lead to a lot of pain later. The folks hate it because they have to change their behavior and they don’t like to change their behavior.

  160. 160.

    brendancalling

    Back in March 2022 a buddy of mine tried to convince me to move to Tucson. I was a “hell no” because I knew that whole state is FUCKED from global warming. I mean, we all are, but southern Arizona will be fucked more quickly and sooner than many other places.

  161. 161.

    Another Scott

    @Citizen Alan: Hehe.

    Or they all died of cholera in 6 months because none of the supermen and women would stoop to cleaning the toilets.

    “Who cleans the toilets in Galt’s Gulch?”

    [eta:] I see Miss Bianca got there first.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  163. 163.

    Suzanne

    I hate Scottsdale. I’m rooting for injuries here.

    Honestly, it’s only getting worse. There is another huge development planned for the southeast side of the metro area that is supposed to be over 200 square miles. They have water rights for 2 square miles of it.

    It fills me with panic. I moved away but my friends still live there. There is no water, y’all!

  164. 164.

    frosty

    @lowtechcyclist: ​Back in the 70s when I was in California and reading about water I bought a book: The Great American Desert. It was about all the land west of the 100th meridian, not what we think of as desert. The meridian defined the line where agriculture required irrigation.
    I’ve read lately that the line has moved east to the 98th meridian.​

  166. 166.

    frosty

    @Wag: ​To do that you need two sewer systems, one for gray and one for black (like in my camper). Older municipalities have spent a few decades building new infrastructure to separate storm water and sanitary sewer flows. I can’t see how you’d manage gray water.​

  167. 167.

    Ixnay

    @trollhattan: the book is an hysterical read, at least to me. It is a town in Western NH that got taken over by libertarians and basically stopped all govt services. The title, “A Libertarian Walked into a Bear.” Things did not go well.

  169. 169.

    Kent

    @Kelly: The Southwest population is sustainable. Southwest agriculture is not.

    Exactly.  The Saudis have big cities in the desert.  But they don’t waste 70% of their water growing alfalfa hay for export.  They pay stupid Americans to do that.

  170. 170.

    Miss Bianca

    @Suzanne: I feel you. Pal D’s entire family lives in the metro Phoenix area. I honest-to-God cannot figure out why they haven’t seen the writing on the wall and gotten the hell out of there.

    Visited the area in the spring a few years back (2018?) – 90F before noon *in April*, good God. Made the mistake of bringing Luna, my late Husky, along for the road trip – had to walk her at 6 am before the sidewalks got so hot they would fry her paws. Poor girl, hanging out the window and panting as we inched our way through the traffic…GAAH, had talked about possibly moving back down that way, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live down there now!

  171. 171.

    LivinginExile

    @Jay: I have worked on hog confinements that had a series of ponds.  The water out of the last pond was good enough to return to creeks.

  172. 172.

    NutmegAgain

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I am also near-ish to coastal CT, but I’ve kind of come home to roost in my last years. I have *too much* water … water in the basement (french drains), and areas where my roof is going green. I’m also about a mile +/- uphill from the Connecticut river (although thankfully our drinking water comes from an aquifer deeper down.). Here the problem is more likely to be pollution: inactive fuel depots up and down the river (some asshole thought, “I know, let’s take the fabulous natural resource around here and crap it up with fuel oil!!”) and there’s even a pipeline for jet fuel (yes really–lots of military aviation in CT, now and in the past). Ah, crumbs, serious regulation and less greed would be amazing.

  174. 174.

    Elizabelle

    Looks like a great thread.  Thank you, Anne Laurie.  Have been meaning to read these articles.

  176. 176.

    RAM

     
    Well, I for one, am completely dumbfounded that people who chose to live in a desert community with no municipal services in order to save a few bucks in taxes would find themselves without water. I mean, who could have possibly foreseen THAT?

  178. 178.

    Jay

    @NutmegAgain:

    the green roof is an easy fix. Zinc strip under the cap shingles on both sides of the roof. Continually leaches a small amount to zinc oxide across the roof, which moss and green molds don’t like.

  179. 179.

    kalakal

    @frosty:

    I remember reading in the first volume of Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson about everything west of the 100th meridian having too little sustainable rain for agriculture. If I remember right Johnson’s dad was fooled by several years of above average rain, bought a lot of land too far west and when the pattern reverted to normal went bankrupt.

    Here in West Central Florida we get a lot of rain but we do have a wet season/dry season. The danger is sinkholes forming as aquifers get depleted and you end up living on a crust of limestone over a big empty hole. As more land gets developed, and more idiots run sprinklers for lawns* it can get very dangererous, houses with people inside have been swallowed up,  though normally it’s a slow motion process.

    *classic lawn grass doesn’t do well here anyway – they’re not great lawns at the best of times

  181. 181.

    Kent

    @Michael Bersin:

    So yeah, people in Arizona are acutely aware of water issues. Those who aren’t are morons.

    The common theme to these anecdotes? Money. What’s more important than a clean and accessible water supply? Promoted development and the profit it generates for developers, corporate manufacturing profit – just dump that toxic crap on the ground, and cheap-ass public procurement because when the bearing fails in twenty years “I’ll be long since retired and it won’t be my problem.”

    Here is the thing.  It is probably 25% to 50% cheaper to buy the same exact home built by the same exact builder out in the bumfuck desert outside of Scottsdale than it is to by within Scottsdale.  And plus, you pay way less taxes.

    People would rather have the McMansion than a smaller and more modest home that they can afford back across the border in Scottsdale.

    Americans always want it all, and actually believe they are ENTITLED to it.  But don’t want to actually pay for it.

  182. 182.

    Martin

    @frosty: My city has a dedicated recycled water system. It was installed in the 60s, and my city actually had to create the standards in the 80s to indicate that the water was neither sewage nor potable. The pipes are purple because the asst. director of the water district was colorblind and purple was a color he could differentiate.

    The standard here is that ‘grey water’ designates non-toilet wastewater that can be used locally via subsurface piping. The purple pipes are recycled so it’s partially treated wastewater but not potable. We have a series of natural treatment systems as well – generally natural public spaces on a grade where water can be discharged at the top and collected as recycled at the bottom. Think of it as a fast poor-mans aquifer arrangement. These are nice because they preserve natural spaces, work best locally so you want them distributed around the area, and basically carry no costs after they’re built.

    Most of the recycled water is used for public irrigation, but you can get a permit to use it for landscaping. Residents can’t discharge into the recycled water system, but residents are strongly encouraged to convert their homes to greywater and use that for their personal irrigation. We’re investigating that now. My home was built just long enough ago that it wasn’t designed with that in mind so it’s a tricky retrofit and there’s a number of decisions about how best to do it (we have 4 potential sources in the house).

    Honestly, any new construction that isn’t designed for solar, including circuit isolation, islanding, roof alignment, etc. and easy greywater collection should be illegal. I’d say just in the west, but eventually that’ll need to be everywhere, so just make it everywhere. In terms of the plans, it just requires a bit of additional consideration by the architect. It’s not expensive, it’s just constraining. Doing these things at the time of construction is negligible in cost.

  183. 183.

    Martin

    @Kent: There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the catalyst for the 2007 housing crisis were people who bought big, cheap homes in the sticks and then couldn’t afford to commute to their job when gas prices spiked, causing them to default.

    It probably would have happened eventually, but also more gradually. The gas price spike was significant and sudden, and if you look at the cities in CA and FL and AZ that really got hit hard, they were ones where people were commuting pretty far.

    I remember when my wife and I were shopping for our first home and we had a very specific conversation about a smaller home close to work or a larger home farther away. She wanted the smaller one so that I wouldn’t spend so much time commuting, I wanted the smaller one because there were so many variables that made the bigger home cheaper in the moment, that were out of our control and could suddenly reverse. Not enough consideration is given to that sort of thing.

  184. 184.

    kmax

    Many years ago… 30ish..  I was looking for a nice place to raise my kids.  I had  a relatively hot IT specialty… one area under consideration was Phoenix.. as I looked at house listings I kept seeing “Water supplies only guaranteed till 1996” etc.. decided maybe I should go where there was water..  this story reminds me that I made a good decision.

  185. 185.

    Kent

    @Martin: It didn’t help that they all bought Ford Expeditions, Chevy Suburbans  or F250 crew-cab trucks to go with their 40 mile commutes.  And couldn’t keep up with the car payments either.

  187. 187.

    cain

    @Kent: I swear to God, the upcoming generations are going to hate our guts  – everyone living from the 80s to now are culpable. The entire mess is “kick the can down the road” – and now these generations have to deal with climate change, water rights, and everything else – and likely get a bunch of “well that shit wasn’t happenign when we were growing up, grow a pair” speeches from the prior generations.

  188. 188.

    cain

    @Kent: Americans always want it all, and actually believe they are ENTITLED to it. But don’t want to actually pay for it.

    Let’s be clear, you mean White americans – because a lot of them have been making sure BiPOC folks don’t get the same opportunity to be entitled.

  194. 194.

    Ciotog

    The last time I went to Arizona I had a taxi driver who told me that the government was preventing the rain from falling in Arizona.  (No doubt it was giving the rain to Those People, although he didn’t say that.)

  195. 195.

    justinb

    @PsiFighter37:

    Utah makes water stupidly dirt cheap and requires lawns to be kept up,

    This is, quite simply, bullshit.

    Signed, a Utah resident with a hugely high water bill, a dead lawn, and tears because all my carefully tended plants that I’ve watered with gray water are dead

    I can water once a week, for 20 minutes. Drip

  196. 196.

    Gemina13

    @Cameron: ​
      Oh, water’s a problem in Florida, just at the opposite extreme of the Southwest. Within 10 years, it’s a tossup whether Miami will need to hire gondoliers or just watch their condos slide into the ocean.

    I lived for 15 years – 10 as a kid, 5 as an adult – in Phoenix, and marveled at how obtuse people were to the reality of desert life. Even in the 1980s, there were news reports discussing how Lake Powell would likely be gone by 2030, and Phoenix & Scottsdale would have to start using effluent for drinking water. In the mid-2000s, I moved back to find Phoenix had exploded in size, with many new homes having swimming pools, along with vaulted ceilings that needed A/C running constantly to keep them cool in summer. And those summers’ temperatures were spiking higher and longer due to the proliferation of asphalt & concrete that held the heat. But nobody wanted to discuss how, eventually, Phoenix was going to run out of water.

    That stucco ranch house might look nice with its high ceilings and faux-Spanish Revival elements, but it costs a bitch to keep comfortable, and the swimming pool loses hundreds of gallons of water every year. And Cook wants to punish Scottsdale because ::checks notes:: the Rio Verde citizens didn’t want to play by the rules, but are insistent Scottsdale should change the rules so they benefit. Sounds like the MAGA/libertarian mindset at work.

  197. 197.

    frosty

    @Martin: ​
     Kudos to your city, that’s pretty amazing! It makes retrofitting a house for gray and black water something useful to do.

    IIRC you’re in Orange County? I read that all their wastewater effluent is injected underground as a buffer to stop salt water intrusion into the aquifer. A lot of recycling going on.

Comments are closed.