SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 4, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:35AM
They have been mining fossil groundwater out west for decades. Much of that water came from the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age. It is not going to be replaced.
You can't have a continual growth economy on a planet with finite resources. People were talking about these problems already in the 60's, when the population of planet was around 3 billion people and the population of the US might not have yet reached 200 million. Dealing with this has been continually kicked down the road in order to allow some to profit, at some point the costs will have to be paid, and the longer we wait the higher the cost will be. No one is entitled to a "way of life" that is not sustainable in the long run.