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Severe drought and mandatory water cuts are pitting communities against each other in Arizona:
As the climate crisis intensifies, battle lines are beginning to form over water. In Arizona -- amid a decades-long megadrought -- some communities are facing the very real possibility of losing access to the precious water that remains.
Outside the city limits of Scottsdale, where the asphalt ends and the dirt road begins, is the Rio Verde Foothills community. Hundreds of homes here get water trucked in from Scottsdale, but those deliveries will end on January 1, 2023.
That's because last summer, for the first time ever, drought conditions forced the federal government to declare a tier 1 water shortage in the Colorado River, reducing how much Arizona can use.
[...] "We are what I call the 'sacrificial lamb' for the bigger areas," Irwin told CNN. "In my opinion, look somewhere else -- we need to be able to sustain ourselves."
The scarcity of water in the state is pitting small towns against fast-growing metropolitan communities.
[...] Arizona's population growth and extreme drought have increased demand for water in limited supply. Kathleen Ferris, a senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy in Arizona, says water scarcity in the state has resulted in the "haves" and the "have nots," and likened the coming water battles to the days of the Wild West. "Once you have your water rights, you defend it," Ferris said. "That's the way it works."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2022, @02:55PM
There is not really a shortage of water. There is a shortage of water in some places where people want to live for reasons other than sustainability. There is plenty of water in Louisiana.
A hundred years ago, not as many people wanted to live in Arizona because it's too hot for comfort without air conditioning. Technology made it more habitable. In the 1920s, nobody would have wanted to move to Arizona to retire.
Generally speaking, technology gets us into trouble and then it gets us out again. Water recycling is a shadow of what it could be. Sustainable development (no lush green lawns in the desert, turn off the fountains at the Bellagio) needs to be encouraged. Desalination has a part to play, a big one once we have enough carbon-free energy to power it. Every person in Southern California who can drink ocean water means enough river water for one more person to drink in Arizona, and they can defray the cost of the desalination plant by selling off the unneeded water rights. Less water-intensive farming practices would help a lot too. Some of that means different crops, some of it means different farming techniques, some of it means genetic engineering drought-resistant crops.
If you want to employ some economic leverage, make builders pay their own way. Right now people buy water from utilities, and the utilities have to buy the water rights, but everyone pays the same rates. Yeah, there's a utility hookup fee for new construction, but this doesn't address the rising marginal cost of purchasing additional water. This means every new person who moves to the desert has their water subsidized by everyone who already lives there, and it's all mandated by local governments (who always want more population, because more population means more revenue). Make all new construction buy the water rights they'll need through some sort of cooperative buying scheme. Now builders, farmers, and governments can all play on the same field. There's only so much water to go around.
As with any serious problem, the correct solution is always "all of the above."