Phoenix 101: Vulnerabilities

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, built upwind from the nation's fifth-largest city and plagued for years by regulator's safety concerns. It is the only nuclear plant in the world not near a large body of water.

People move to Phoenix bragging about the lack of blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. True enough. Yet they are moving into a place burdened by its own special hazards. They're the ones your real estate agent didn't mention; the ones that what is left of journalism rarely covers. That nobody talks about them besides -- I hope -- emergency planners, does not make them any less dangerous. Indeed, a case could be made that Phoenix is one of the highest-risk metro areas in the nation. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Risk Index, Maricopa County is rated "relatively high." Higher than "tornado alley" in Kansas and Oklahoma.

One of the most populous metropolitan areas in the nation has been built in a hostile desert. It's isolated, with limited highways, no passenger rail and surrounded by hundreds of miles of inhospitable, waterless badlands. Evacuation in an emergency would be impossible. The closest large cities -- Tucson and Las Vegas -- are as vulnerable as Phoenix. Gasoline must be brought in by pipelines from refineries hundreds of miles away. Water and the electricity for air conditioning depend on complex, vulnerable systems.

This harsh reality should have been brought home earlier in this decade, when, amidst brutal August heat, a gasoline pipeline broke; a year later, a mid-summer transformer fire threatened to shut down the power grid. The gas crisis was particularly frightening. Fights broke out at filling stations. People drove around in search of a tanker truck to follow. More inquisitive residents were surprised that such a large city has no refinery and is served by only two pipelines, one from the east, one from the west, built decades ago when Phoenix held a fraction of its current population.

There was a savage vibe in the hot streets. One that I had picked up on occasion years before, when I worked on the ambulance in the city's most dangerous areas. It was a vibe that said the mask of civilization could slip in an instant. Gasoline is the lifeblood, particularly for a place laid out in precisely the wrong way for a desert city: sprawling over 1,500 square miles, requiring endless single occupancy vehicle driving. Gasoline is the only way out in an emergency. Things could have gone very bad, very quickly. The same was true after the fire that spread from one transformer to another — they were stacked smartly side by side — until the metro area's power capacity had been badly wounded. At the worst time of year.

One had to ask: What would happen if the power went out for hours or days. How many would die? How long before panic, looting, insurrection? New Orleans was only special in that it held a large underclass and it was almost abandoned after Hurricane Katrina. Phoenix has the former already. Reaching it in a heat emergency would be a massive challenge. The situation would be made all the more lethal by the large number of vulnerable, older residents who have retired there.

It could be worse. Back in the 1960s, when Phoenix held about half-a-million people, it was never clear whether we would be a first-strike or a second-strike target. Tucson was definitely gone. It was surrounded by silos holding the Air Force's most powerful nuclear-tipped missiles, so the Soviets were going to take it out. Yet Phoenix in those days wasn't just a real-estate Ponzi scheme. It had two Air Force bases and a Naval Air Station, and held a substantial (hard as it is to believe now) cluster of defense industries.

In any event, nobody really knew how, or if, the Soviet missiles would work. One might fall short, short enough to vaporize Phoenix. And 120 miles away, several scores of megatons would have gone off anyway. As Americans, we bore this without destroying civil liberties or making a near police state. But thinking people in Phoenix were very aware of its nakedness; at a time when Civil Defense officials elsewhere had plans to evacuate cities, Phoenix was stuck. I remember one water engineer musing that "all the Russians have to do is bomb the dams and we're dead."

Today's threats are less severe by comparison. But they may be more likely to erupt.

This nice, new-looking metropolitan area — outside of the growing linear slums — is downwind from the largest nuclear power plant in North America. (Who thought that was a good idea; and nuke plants use mucho water). It was one that for years was a bad boy in the eyes of federal regulators, although the newspapers always assured us that there was no safety hazard. We can only hope this is one example where our institutions did not lie to us and put us at risk.

As the Kookocracy protects gun rights, the biggest threat grows unchecked — and it won't be addressed by superior firepower. All the cities in the South and Southwest are menaced by global warming. Which one will become uninhabitable by large numbers of people first? Atlanta, the Texas metros or Phoenix? The latter won't face the tropical diseases that will emerge in the Southeast (although Phoenix didn't have today's mosquito problem when I was a kid). It does face a tipping point when power and gasoline are too expensive. When too many people spread out over too much land becomes painfully unsustainable. When the carrying capacity — long ago reached — becomes too much to sweep under the rug of boosterism and sunshine. When the water Ponzi scheme finally collapses.

It's coming, especially thanks to years of corporate-sponsored delay in implementing measures that could have stopped the worst consequences of global warming. In the meantime, sleep with one eye open, "Valley." You are transient visitors to a hostile wilderness that has defeated the artifice of men before.

A friend reminds me that the Salt River Valley once grew a considerable amount of food, and Phoenix had one of the world's largest stockyards, drawing on Arizona's vibrant cattle industry. Most of that was plowed under for subdivisions, where the denizens buy food that comes from a thousands-mile-long supply chain, highly vulnerable to energy prices and world instability.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

Comments

[soleri]

Yeah, but a new restaurant opened near downtown so you're obviously bitter.

Seriously, there's no cure for denial except an unassailable fact staring you in the face. We won't learn because there's nothing more seductive than ignorance masquerading as optimism. Plus, scientists are notoriously liberal. That's why Global Warming is a crock.

The central nervous system of Phoenix is like that of a jellyfish. In other words, there isn't one. We don't even know we're stranded. Rain, cooler weather, and appreciating housing values are lurking down the highway. Just like a mirage .

[Superlurker]

I agree with everything you said in this article except for one thing. Palo Verde NGS is the largest nuke in the US, not North America. The good folks of Ontario Canada can lay claim to that title.

[PaulS]

I wonder if you have read the recently published "Dead Pool" by James Powell and its 80's predecessor "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner. They both explore the water issues in the West, the newer book having a large intersection with climate change.

Quote from "Dead Pool" describing an "unthinkable" scenario, some of it not so unthinkable now (found on http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/2009/01/is-dead-pool-dead-on.html ):
With both surface [water] and groundwater supplies severely limited and no relief in sight, Phoenix declares a stage-four water emergency, its highest level. The state legislature rescinds the Groundwater Management Act. Voluntary reductions having long since failed to conserve enough water, Phoenix enforces rationing. Watering lawns, washing cars, and splashing in water parks are distant memories. The two hundred golf courses in Phoenix and Scottsdale have been closed for years, their verdant fairways and manicured greens blown away on the hot dry wind. Valves attached to water meters automatically shut off the flow when consumption exceeds the limit. Armed water police with the authority to shut off valves and make arrests patrol neighborhoods. Phoenix doubles the price of water to residences, raises it even more for the heaviest water users, and prohibits new water hook-ups. Home construction shuts down and the once-booming central Arizona real estate market collapses. As tax revenues decline, Phoenix runs short of funds and rating agencies reclassify its bonds as junk.

Following Nevada's example, Phoenix begins to build a desalting plant on the Sea of Cortés. But as the border crisis intensifies, and with its own water supplies at dangerous lows, Mexico nationalizes all American-owned factories in the country, including the desalting plants and the maquiladoras. By the 2020s, with water, the stuff of life at stake, it is every nation for itself.

Businesses and families begin to abandon Phoenix, creating a Grapes of Wrath-like exodus in reverse. Long lines of vehicles clog the freeways, heading east towards the Mississippi and north toward Oregon and Washington. Burning hot, parched, and broke, the city that rose from the ashes achieves its apogee and falls back toward the fire. -- Dead Pool, by James Lawrence Powell pp. 239-240.

[James]

Yikes! Lighten up!

I'm not sure I understand your point of pointing out Phoenix's "vulnerabilities." All cities have them, they just manifest themselves in different ways depending on location. The Southeast has hurricanes; the Midwest, blizzards and tornadoes; the west coast, earthquakes and tsunami risk; the Pacific northwest, volcanoes and lahar risk; the east coast, too many people, tsunami risk.

And, all cities, terrorism risk.

Here's an idea: Write about one city/country on the planet that "doesn't" have its/their own unique "vulnerabilities." Then you'd have an interesting read.