The water fix

The Arizona media have been producing many process stories (e.g. this one) about the federal government's insistence that states agree on a plan to use less Colorado River water at this time of historic drought. Resistant farmers in Pinal County have come in for special criticism, including an intelligent piece by the Arizona Republic's Joanna Allhands about Pinal likely to increase its pumping of groundwater.

At the same time, the same media have engaged in their usual growthgasm stories about Arizona once again being one of the nation's fastest-growing states in population. Arizona held 7,171,646 souls as of this past July. In 1970, two years after the funding for the Central Arizona Project was signed into law, the state's population was 1.7 million.

Yet I have yet to see any story connect the two.

The disconnect is staggering, matched only by the inattention to climate change as a prime driver of the ongoing Southwestern drought.

Arizona's "plan" is to keep adding people, no matter what. The entire economy's foundation is based on continuing large increases in population. Not only that, but to continue doing so in single-family housing sprawl far from historic urban centers. The Real Estate Industrial Complex hopes for 300,000-plus people west of the White Tanks. A monstrous development near Benson would destroy the San Pedro River, the last major free-flowing stream in the Southwest.

This is a dead end. Reality doesn't care what Grady Gammage or Elliott Pollack or "Sun Corridor" Michael Crow want or are selling.

Pinal County is a prime example of this folly. In 1970, its population was 68,000. As of 2017, it stood at more than 430,000 (nearly the population of Phoenix in 1960). These are almost exclusively in far-flung subdivisions, totally car dependent, many with lakes and golf courses. This, not agriculture, is the problem. Farms can go fallow in times of water scarcity. Subdivision pods can't. Maricopa alone has grown from a few hundred at the end of the 20th century to 47,000 in 2016.

The water situation in Pinal County has been a crisis for decades. Even as a rural area, its agriculture was unsustainable, dependent on pumping groundwater collected over millennia. The Central Arizona Project and the 1980 Groundwater Management Act were intended to stop this. Yet, as Allhands points out, Pinal has a loophole that allows it to continue as before. But the situation is even more dire: The calculus about the CAP was not based on the county becoming a water-guzzling suburb of metropolitan Phoenix. (And the groundwater act and active water management districts are full of such evasions and outright fraud in permitting).

The Salt River Valley should be a different situation. It's at or near the confluence of five rivers in the wettest desert on the planet. Dams on the Salt and Verde rivers provided a reliable source of renewable water. This unique situation allowed the creation of the "American Eden" agricultural empire and later a major city. But the beast of sprawl long ago slipped the bonds of the Salt River Project and now metropolitan Phoenix depends on the Colorado River, via the CAP, for about 30 percent of its water.

Here's an interesting thought exercise: Minneapolis-St. Paul grew by 15 percent in the 1980s and 17 percent in the 1990s. Like metropolitan Phoenix, the Twin Cities suffer from extreme weather. Or Seattle's King County, with more moderate but often drizzly weather: 19 percent growth in the 1980s and 15 percent growth in the 1990s.

Unlike Phoenix, their growth metrics have been in college-educated adults, high-end corporate assets, research and development, venture capital and startups, and culture. Metro Seattle  gave birth to two of the five Big Tech giants.

Phoenix's only measures have been people and houses. In the 1980s, metro Phoenix grew by 40 percent and another 45 percent in the 1990s.

That kind of growth is killing Phoenix's future. Growth doesn't pay for itself, particularly with Arizona's low taxes. That kind of growth is a burden, however much the sprawl elite profits from the short hustle ("It's Chinatown, Jonny."). Twin Cities or King County growth could have been accommodated in the Salt River Valley footprint without need for a drop from the Colorado.

If Arizona had implemented relatively high, progressive taxes to benefit the people already here with high-quality schools, transit and passenger trains, world-class economic and cultural assets, the story would be very different. Along with land-use boundaries, this would have ensured a sustainable state — and the unique beauty and livability that a few of us remember.

Instead, we have created a suicide pact. They can kill the Phoenix oasis, chop down all the shade trees, throw out ideas about a second CAP canal and desalination plants, and "cool concrete," but this is magical thinking.

The only way to address the Colorado River shortages is to stop the sprawl, indeed to reverse it. Anything else is a dangerous lie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Ramjet]

I may not have written an article about the relationship between the CAP and population growth in Phoenix and Arizona.

I have commented on this forum numerous times about it. We "old-timers" know who to thank (blame?) for our current water and population crisis. Uncle Carl, Cousin John, Brother Barry and various other neer-do-well politicians.

The old trite saying: Whiskey is for Drinking - Water is for Fighting still applies.

[Cal Lash]

AMEN

[soleri]

There's something problematic about human nature at work here. We will make ourselves secure and comfortable but at the expense of cooking the planet and overestimating our own water supply. What to do? Well, humans are fairly stubborn, and "more of the same" is the usual response. Jared Diamond explored this problem in his book Collapse, which discusses the ways we destroy the only environment we have sustaining us. Not to worry! Libertarians have convinced many if not most of us that science is an untrustworthy guide to reality. The simplest answer usually wins in politics, and nothing beats doing nothing when immediate self-interest is involved.

Phoenix has played the short hustle for much of its dubious existence. It's not that there weren't visionaries like Carl Hayden but they couldn't quite see the long-term consequences played out in geologic time. We're not that smart but we do know how to survive a drought. Rinse, repeat, and keep pumping that groundwater.

Greed and aggression are hard-wired into the human psyche and will likely be the last traits to expire in the unavoidable catastrophe of anthropogenic global warming. Phoenix will probably feel the tongues of fire sooner rather than later, but the prognosis is increasingly grim for the human project overall. We who are old, who played obliviously in the blue rivers and mountain meadows of this planetary Eden, might wonder how it all ends now. Like all nightmares, not well.

[Cal Lash]

Abbey predicted fire. "The Good News"
Currently Fire and Water are on exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. A great show.

http://www.phxart.org/exhibition/teotihuacan

[Cal Lash]

Excellent Seattle times piece by columnist Jon Talton in the Front Pages.

https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/in-our-new-post-truth-era-the-way-we-view-reality-is-more-important-than-ever/

[Leroy Essel]

Over 220,000 curious minds recently viewed "The Little Pacific Project" for "Refilling Lake Mead" and to make this project economically viable the US mature Hydrogen 2.0 start-up can desalinate ocean water as a free byproduct of generating highly competitive clean energy anywhere on the thirsty planet.

[Jerry McKenzie]

The REIC needs to get its act together to keep the hustle going. AZ is not prepared for the upcoming battles in court, Congress, tribal interests, and all the involved state houses. Jon Kyl will no doubt clean up tho.

[Joe]

If water was priced appropriately, with considerations for future requirements, then conservation efforts would be more effective. I've put a fake grass putting green in there there was sod, installed low flush toilets and we use a high efficiency washer. Nothing short of pricing in the scarcity of a commodity will be very effective.

[Diane D'Angelo]

Up here in Denver, we're experiencing yet another mild, dry winter. Zonies might want to take heed: https://www.westword.com/news/denver-was-drier-than-phoenix-in-2018-11088187

[Cal Lash]

Forget the "Water Fix."
Get yours now!
Drink as much as possible!

From a guy I know.

"I want to focus on the climate change thing here. I think it is all too late.

I don’t say this because I think we should all give up. Our humanity is defined, and exemplified, by the insistence on trying even in the face of inevitable failure, whether we’re aware of it or not.

There are two reasons that I believe that we cannot overcome the tipping point.

The first is political. There is no way we are going to be able to herd the cats of political power, especially since it requires international cooperation, in time to do anything meaningful, even if we had the time.

The second is because we don’t even have the time. Things have been set in motion. The melting of the icecaps and of permafrost set in motion two positive-feedback loops that are terrifying, IMO. This is not new information, but it is critical. The fact that our planet will simply become “darker” without the ice reflecting a certain amount of sunlight away from the Earth means that we’re going to get warmer, CO2 or no CO2. The melting of the permafrost is even more devastating. There is, right now, methane bubbling out of these areas that was kept interred by the frozen mosses now being thawed. Methane makes CO2 look like a piker when it comes to greenhouse gases. As that shit continues to enter the general atmosphere, we could cut our CO2 output to zero and we’re still in the same shit. We could magically restore the entire Amazonian jungles and forests and discover that trees don’t breathe methane.

I think it’s game over. But, as I pointed out earlier, no one should use this as an excuse to do nothing... to just take the short-term profits and run, grandchildren be damned.

Next time you need some cheering up, I’m available."

[Cal Lash]

Ready for Trump and Pelosi to go to war
over
Walls, Borders and Human existence.

Down load the pdf for "Wisdom of Rats"
for better reading.

https://harpers.org/author/charlesbowden/

[Ruben]

Diane, the current snow pack for the Colorado river watershed is at 19% above average, which is great. I hope the trend keeps up until mid April when the final snow pack report is made.

Joe, I've lived in two communities with punitive water rates and the people toe the line real fast and water usage goes way down, with minimal complaints. Once the abusers get a $700 water bill, they change their habits.

cal, has anyone measured the methane coming out of both ends of trump?

[dave weiss]

efforts at conservation are silly...the use of less water only builds more communities in the suburbs until the demand is greater than before conservation..the people whose once and future wealth depends on buying acres and selling square feet have way too much to lose by being sensible.

we are in a game of musical chairs but the music is flowing water and the game is not a game when the music stops..deadly serious.

there are too may of us and that make us all more thirsty when the music stops..

[Cal Lash]

So said Tom Malthus

[Roger]

This is insane. Yesterday, a Home Builder's Association demanded more water and nearly brought the ADWR / CAP / Drought Contingency Plan meeting in Phoenix to a halt.

Couple this with the Federal Government Shutdown, and LA's MWD threatening to pull their intentionally created surplus in Lake Mead, plus the near constant crying from CAWCD (CAP) to be equal signers on the DCP and you can see that this state would rather tear itself apart than actually address the issue.

If this thing isn't signed by Ducey by January 31, then the Feds would step in. If it isn't signed, LA MWD pulls their water, which would drop the lake so fast that Arizona would be staring at a near dry cement ditch running through the center of the state.

Link to the Phoenix New Times article

[Cal Lash]

Something to do while we are dying for lack of water.
I recommend Jon's August 25 2011 column "Men dont read. " Great piece, good comments including Jon's old class mate that shot her mother.
Jon how about reposting it with an update?

https://roguecolumnist.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/2011/08/men-dont-read.html