Magical thinking and Bolles

Two topics this week:

• Above is a water desalination plant at Eilat, Israel, which turns Red Sea salt water into fresh water. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates make up the biggest users of desalination, with 21,000 plants worldwide, even in Australia.

Now an Israeli company, IDE Technologies, proposes to bring such an operation to Arizona, from the Sea of Cortez at Rocky Point through the Mexican state of Sonora.

At a cost of $5 billion, it would deliver 1 million acre feet annually to Arizona. Or so is the plan. By comparison, the Central Arizona Project carries 1.4 million acre feet from the Colorado River. The CAP cost approximately $4 billion, with only $1.5 billion repaid to the federal government. 

In 2016, Scientific American proclaimed "Israel proves the desalination era is here," as one of the driest countries on earth makes more fresh water than it needs using this technology. 

The article states:

Desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but the kind of advanced technologies being employed at (the Sorek plant) have been a game changer. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in the 1990s. Sorek can produce a thousand liters of drinking water for 58 cents. Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to households in most U.S. cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los Angeles (US$58).

The International Desalination Association claims that 300 million people get water from desalination, and that number is quickly rising. IDE, the Israeli company that built Ashkelon, Hadera and Sorek, recently finished the Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, a close cousin of its Israel plants, and it has many more in the works. Worldwide, the equivalent of six additional Sorek plants are coming online every year. The desalination era is here.

As for Arizona, skepticism is in order. For one thing, Sonora's governor quickly walked back his support. He has good reason to do so. Mexico was screwdooded by the American dams on the Colorado River, which shrank the once magical river delta to a bare trickle. Money to build the plant would require a huge lift in both Washington and Mexico City. The Upper Basin and California delegations would be sure to oppose it.

Worst of all, even if the desalination plant fulfilled all its promises, it defies the First Law of Holes: When in a hole, stop digging.

Arizona's problem is too many people and too much sprawl. This merely continues the thinking of anything, anything, for more car-burderned "master planned communities" in the Sunshine Corridor with championship golf. Rip out the shade trees! Rip out the turf (grass) and every vestige of the old oasis! Throw down more gravel and pavement! Let's hike Camelback in high summer where Phoenix Fire rescues us, because you don't have to shovel sunshine!

Desalination for Phoenix is the same kind of magical thinking that is employed with climate change. Technology will save us! Anything, anything to continue the Happy Motoring Era, driving from our subdivisions to the Super Walmart. Instead, fundamental changes will be required to keep carbon in the ground and reduce emissions, including building high-speed rail.

• On to Don Bolles, the Arizona Republic reporter assassinated by a car bomb in 1976. An effort is under way in the Legislature to build a memorial to him near the capitol. Perhaps not surprisingly, the bill isn't smooth sailing but facing opposition from some Republicans.

The sad reality is that no news organization in Arizona is doing the kind of investigative reporting that the Republic and Phoenix Gazette did then, not only by Bolles but colleagues such as Al Sitter and Don Dedera. (I fictionalized this era in my David Mapstone Mystery The Bomb Shelter, based on hours of interviews with the investigators of the Bolles bombing).

This reporting would focus on power and corruption. Back then, it included land fraud. Now it would be the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the payoffs and strong-arm tactics for getting around water restrictions; who benefits in state government from this and the charter school racket, and the many hidden conflicts of interests.

Such stories that hold the powerful accountable would be a real monument to Don Bolles. But, as one who tried and paid the price, I can tell you it will never happen.

 

 

Comments

[drifter]

Rogue, Would you further clarify the statement "The Upper Basin and California delegations would be sure to oppose it."
Why would they oppose additional water to a water system that is apparently running dry?

[cal Lash]

Technolgy is a destructive sword.
The demise of roaming hunter gathers and the beginning of erecting villages sitting in their own shit (Cities) is the downfall of the human species.
When humans are gone and the grasses grow thru the asphalt and concrete the eternal coyotes will still howl at full moons.

STERK FORAGER

[Rogue Columnist]

Drifter,

They would oppose their tax money going to benefit Arizona, specifically Phoenix. Trust me, there's bad blood going back decades.

[cal Lash]

"Bad Blood"
Dosent mix well with water.
It all began when Moses parted the sea.
And since the fight for the Temple on an Aleppo Hill top has continued.

In memory of Charles Bowden

"Killing the Hidden Waters"

the edition with a spider on the cover has his introduction

[Ez Pz]

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending
-- James Howard Kunstler

Connect up the issues:

Place not worth caring about is not worth martyring yourself to do investigative journalism about.

Place not worth defending will lack border enforcement, with attendant consequences.

Place not worth defending will not be sending people to fight useless WWIII in Ukraine or Taiwan.

Elites, including especially the bankers and developers who created the places not worth caring about, also view the nation and the kulaks themselves as not worth caring about, and not worth defending from anything.

Kulaks in places not worth caring about will soon tire of having remaining assets taxed and redistributed to elites to pay for anything, while being repressed and called racist.

Not too hard to figure out, is it?

[Elsa Entyvio]

Expect the proponents of growth to seize upon this wet winter to claim the twenty years of drought is erased. Lake Mead and Lake Powell still dropping. Fake news.

[Cal Lash]

"Technological thinking has merely provided us with more effecient means for going backwards."
Aldous Huxley

Investigative reporting of organized and white collar crime in Arizona was murdered by politicans and continues to profitable for politicans and their supporters.

Brave individuals like Don Bolles,
Al Sitter, Dave C Wagner, Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Jullian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg and others are threatened daily by their own governments.

As nations move to dictatorships and the environment continues to be poisoned we can see the death face mask of human extiction.

ADIOS

[Cal Lash]

Nobel Peace Price winner,
Ales Bialiatski sentenced to 10 years in a Belarus prison for saying the truth.

Free Julian Assange,bring Snowden home, Pardon Reality Winner and Chelsa Manning.
Give Daniel Ellsberg a heros ceremony.

[A. J. Edmondson]

After 911, the Phoenix Police Department phased out one of its elite investigative groups, the Organized Crime Bureau. This was done in response for the need to have a Homeland Defense Bureau. The department couldn't afford an additional bureau at the time, so they shut down OCB and formulated their Homeland Defense Bureau, using many of the components of OCB. Other investigative units and details within OCB were reassigned to the Violent Crimes Bureau and the Drug Enforcement Bureau.

Then starting in about 2010, the Phoenix Police Department had an approximate seven year hiring freeze, at a time when the Phoenix metro area was becoming the number one place to move to. Absolute stupidity on the part of the city planners. The department never recovered from this hiring freeze, and they're still short about 800 or so positions.

All of this has led to a complete lack of resources to carry out any decent (especially long term, which is what most of them are,) white collar/organized crime investigations. Which probably hasn't been done since the dismantling of the Organized Crime Bureau, within a couple of years after 911. This amounts to an approximate 20-year period of zero priority and emphasis on combating traditional organized crime.

IMHO, many of those organized crime entities know this, and in the past 20 years have settled in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Knowing full well, they'll most likely never be detected, investigated, stopped, or apprehended. Also, IMHO, in Arizona, true hard core journalistic investigative reporting was murdered and buried, when Don Bolles was murdered and buried.

Perhaps the reason that there is so much opposition to having a Don Bolles memorial is the same reason why the Phoenix Police Department no longer has an Organized Crime Bureau. Perhaps some of the powers to be don't like those types of investigations, or a memorial to one who did a great job at that and would also be a reminder of just how corrupt things were back then.... kind of makes you wonder if anything has really changed.

A. J. Edmondson

[Cal Lash]

Good post Edmo.
However i would point out HML and Drug Enforcement are Federal responsibilities.
I personally observed from my close assignments to police administrators and city management an effort to ensure that politicians and other "important" individuals would never again be embarrassed again by the City of Phoenix Police Department. (OCB)
I recall when two police officers were allowed to form a private company to get in front of events that might cause trouble for important individuals and organizations.
Todays police department is ran by a civilan city manager.
Back when OCB was kicking butt i recall a police chief telling the city manager to take a hike. The chief told him, its my police department.

But keep in mind crime is good for the economy. Particularly if you have private prison stock where the beds are kept full but not by white collar criminals and corrupt politicians.

[A. J. Edmondson]

Absolutely Cal!

The Phoenix Police Chief no longer has civil service protection and is hired at the whim of the City Manager and Council. Real "in charge" police chiefs ended with Chief Ortega. The last Chief to actually have full police chief powers.

So now, the police chief serves at the whim of the city manager who is their real boss. The department has been totally politicized and corrupted IMHO. I'm pretty sure any major sensitive type investigations would have to be run by the city manager for review and approval.

IMHO this means an environment has been created which could enable extreme political corruption. I doubt you will ever see another political corruption investigation again. The rabid wolves are guarding the hen house. Thank God we retired before the ship sank!

[Rogue Columnist]

People might be interested in this:

https://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2017/11/phoenix-confidential-ocb.html

[Cal Lash]

Note:Jon's Front Pages has am Atlantic article;
Big city's are ungovernable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/lightfood-chicago-mayors/673264/

I agree.
I have mentioned to many for years that Phoenix would eventually would be unable to maintain its infrastructure. Just drive around for sometime and observe.
Is it unethical to kill rats?

[Pat]

It's only unethical to kill rats if you don't intend to eat them, Cal.

[[email protected]]

Pat. Your right.
But rats prefer big cities.
I live in the desert

[eclecticdog]

California should be building desalination plants, but the politics point to keeping the straws in the Colorado River.

[Cal Lash]

Note: Edmo i sure you recall i was the admistrative Sergeant to
Police Chiefs Lawerence Wetzel and Ruben Ortega.
AND
I was Mayor Margaret Hances ticket to getting home safely.
Until i told her and her administrative aide Marty Shultz as union president i would not support her running for another term as mayor.
So they gave Bobby Fellens the job.
Last i heard the PD has a whole squad doing such.

Not a Brave New World.
But
my guns bigger than your gun.

[Cal Lash]

Electricdog. I know you are involved in building bigger and better choppers but i gotta tell you, i dont think sucking up sea water is a good thing. Just kill more whales.
Given the current state of human tragedy along with a ever erupting planet, we may have enough water.

SIGNING OFF WITH A WAVE TO MY HEROES, THE Luddites and a nod for Thomas Malthus.

[Elsa Entyvio]

Based on the response to this column, I don’t anticipate any desalination plants being built, nor do I anticipate any Don Bolles memorials being built. Arizona’s future may be a place where Arizona kulaks are bred and raised on the surface, then fed to the Morlocs (SIC) underground.

[AzRebel]

cal, speaking of guns, who is shooting up the neighborhood out there in AJ? They are predicting when the snow birds haul their RV's and trailers back up north, there is going to be a lot of whistling noise from the bullet holes.

[Cal Lash]

Jacob Waltz

[AzRebel]

Really?

I'd think he would be getting low on ammo at this point. Don't think he'd want to waste it on Canadian and midwestern varmits.

[Cal Lash]

He is shooting gold bullets

[Rogue Columnist]

With all due respect, Cal, the Atlantic article was focused on Chicago and shallowly reported.

We need people in cities, especially in Arizona, especially in the central cores watered by the Salt River Project.

Sprawl into the desert is killing Arizona, adding to its water problems, traffic congestion, and pollution, as well as profaning its once-beautiful, once-empty spaces, from Buckeye and Douglas Ranch to Apache Junction and Queen Creek.

[Cal Lash]

Jon. I approve of your comment.
But i dont think the planet needs more people
AND
You know im opposed to SPRAWL.
To repeat my self Phoenix is so large it cant possibly maintain its infrastructure.
May grasses grow through the asphalt and concrete.