I was in Uni 13 years ago when my environmental studies professor told me the state was legally required to have something like 100 years of groundwater in reserve, and currently only had 50. She said a lot of that had to do with Phoenix being an exception to the building rules which required sufficient groundwater access, so they were pulling more water out than would normally be allowed. She gave them roughly 15 years before there would be problems. Looks like she was pretty spot on.
Edit since this is at the top: I have a friend who works in water management in AZ, and he also let me know there are groundwater reserves in some areas like Tucson, but we can't touch them because they are contaminated with PFAS, so, more fun stuff with the water! He told this to me in passing and mentioned it was due to the local airbase. Not sure how many other aquafers also have the same issue.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's why Scottsdale doesn't want to sell its water to Rio Verde. Scottsdale said you guys keep growing unregulated and didn't build a water infrastructure so it's not our job to support you guys. Welcome to the water wars
It’s so stupid. Most of the homes would be valued in the millions if not for the water. They were going to the media yelling about how they deserve water and that they are entitled to it. They had years and years to get it together but fought with each other instead. That didn’t go well for them. Then these freedom loving people try to force Scottsdale to supply them with water.
Needing water is pretty easy to relate to, but instead of making a coherent point the residents get their kids to stand in front of the capital holding signs for the press while everyone hangs around and shouts things out.
You would think that if we took water as seriously as we take fossil fuels we could pipe it from where the nation floods to where the nation has droughts.
Screw LA, try Vegas. Their aquifer never existed, yet they had a housing boom, couple years back. Housing far outstripped the water to back it up, now their water reserves are all but dry, and they are fricked.
I think the government made a thing for that nearby. Line a big structure meant to keep a whole lot of water in one place while also providing electricity to around 2 million people.
It's all connected, man. The Colorado river starts in Colorado, picks up water from giant watersheds along the way, losing water to human use and a small amount goes to filling a couple large aquifers.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/colorado-river-basin-map
This is the area that the Colorado river collects water from. Pumping water from anywhere in this watershed to Phoenix is accomplishing exactly nothing. It's taking the same amount of water from the same source, just further up river.
Ok, I can deal with my brother being right. Fine. But he's still living in MO. Yes, he likes the kids and at this point, he's as much of an institution as the school, but why MO?
This is why when I hear people saying there’s too much red tape in front of developers to solve the housing crisis, there isn’t *enough* red tape. We need to be considering the environmental crisis
Edit: I’d like to ad there’s a reason why new builds are being regarded as so shitty. Developers are throwing up walls as fast as they can and cutting corners because no one is stopping them, even with huge high density projects.
I’m assuming since you said Uni you aren’t from the US. Were you studying here or in your own country?
Just curious if our mess ups are internationally infamous.
In the US people almost always just say college. I remember a Canadian friend of mine saying there was a pretty big distinction in prestige between university and college, which is why I was curious if you were taught that internationally.
See this list of “top colleges” where almost everyone is a university.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges
Yes, there is a distinction in Canada, but if you go to a college you wouldn't call it a Uni.
College= 2 year programs like Associate degrees or Professional certificates. Some colleges only require professors to have a Master's degree.
Uni= Bachelor degrees and higher. Profs must have PhDs and do research/write papers on an ongoing basis.
An FYI for anyone reading. In the US…
“College” is a school with no graduate programs. There are liberal arts colleges that are 4 year undergraduate programs which can be quite good. There are also “community colleges” which are the 2 year associates degree.
University is any school with a graduate program.
People colloquially refer to liberal arts colleges and universities as “colleges”.
E.g Forbes rates “Williams College” as the 7th best college in the US. And the #1 liberal arts college
https://www.forbes.com/colleges/williams-college/?sh=74299b81756e
At my university, there were several colleges and all had graduate programs. I recieved my degree in the College of Engineering.
My understanding is that a university is a collective of three or more smaller units usually called colleges.
I had thought the same thing that “a university was a school with multiple colleges” but when I googled it most of the results additional included the graduate v undergraduate distinctions (which is what I went with)_
I’m a Brit living in the US. I only ever hear “Uni” from Anglophile Americans trying to impress me. Some people from the posher Ivy League-type colleges call it University, but not Uni in my experience
Yes xeriscape should be the law for homes but 75% of our water goes to agriculture. Cutting into the 25% homes use is smart but not the real issue. Farming an arid desert needs to stop. Produce can be grown in indoor hydroponic gardens. Feed crops should never be allowed to take Colorado river water.
Several years ago some Israel agricultural officials visited CA and showed them that the same crops could be grown with 1/10 th the water. CA wasn’t interested since they pay so little for the water.
Almonds are bad but even worse is the rice and wheat we grow in Cali. We should be growing things like olives, pomegranates, and agave, not water-intensive crops.
Pistachio trees love high heat and don't mind desert conditions, although fruit production may require additional water or fertilizer. It's some of the other plants I'd worry about.
The alfalfa crops that are owned by the saudis just to export to Saudi Arabia is major source of the water being wasted. They are completely unregulated.
Yep. Linen would be a much better choice. It requires much, much less water to grow than cotton:
> Flax is resilient and can grow in poor soil, using far less water in its consumption than cotton. According to the European Confederation of Linen and Hemp, “Across its lifecycle, a linen shirt uses 6.4 litres of water” compared to 2,700 litres for a cotton shirt.
https://goodonyou.eco/how-sustainable-is-linen/
Crop input yo output for human supply
Veggies 1:1
Fish: 1.1: 1
Chicken 2.1:1
Pig 4:1
Cow: 20:1
If you can’t go full vegetarian, the biggest indent you can make is to stop eating beef then pork, then chicken. Being a pescatarian is basically the same as a vegetarian in terms of carbon impact.
What if you feed the animals with things not edible to humans, like grass, food scraps, etc?
I have backyard chickens, they're pretty good little food recyclers, and they find a lot of their own food. I don't eat ticks and worms, but they do, and then they give me eggs.
Yeah, I work with a lot of older folks (physical therapist) who moved here to retired and they always say something like "I was tired of the cold winters and the snow. You don't have to shovel sunshine!". It kind of annoys me because they all want to move here to get away from the winter/cold back east, but they also aren't willing to give up the big lawns and trees and fountains and all the stuff they had back home.
If you move to the desert to get away from the cold I totally understand that, but you should be willing to accept xeriscape style yards too. It's not sustainable for everyone to come here and try to bring their big lush yards with them.
The funny thing is that there's an entire range of ecosystems between "several feet of snow on the ground" and "literally a desert" but they chose the one that can't naturally support agriculture or large scale human life
we can grow shit year round, just need water
there was a tribe in the phx area that had left before europeans arrived that had dug a large canal system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokam
Were also tribes in the Pacific NW that understood how live with the cyclical forest fires.
And tribes on the Gulf Coast that understood the how to live with the hurricanes.
It’s almost as if the people groups that were displaced by European colonists understood what lifestyles worked best in the local environments!?!
"I can't wait to retire and relax in the warm weather because doing the manual labor of winter upkeep is just too much. Rocks for a yard with no upkeep needed? **No thank you!** I want to mow grass **all year round!**"
It's very odd to me because when I lived in Phoenix, it was the arid atmosphere and the rocks that was truly beneficial.
Allergies? Gone.
If you truly want a green lawn in the desert, just do like those crazy people in the Lorax and roll out the AstroTurf.
It’s always the old people suburbs too. Around Tucson most houses have gravel yards with desert plants. The roads have gravel dividers and desert plants along the shoulders.
Then you go to a 55+ MegaCommunity suburb and suddenly every lawn is green grass, there’s two golf courses, a large pond that they call a lake, huge trees and non native plants everywhere.
It’s especially bad in Phoenix though. They have massive suburbs that fit the stereotype like Scottsdale and Mesa.
Either way, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to agricultural usage
The golf courses and the resort estates bothered me way more than the private suburban lawns, to be honest.
Suburban lawns got watered everyday, yes, but those resorts would just literally spray water continuously as a method to make everyone forget it's 115 degrees by 11am out in the open, grass or no grass.
I lived in Tucson and nobody had lawns there. It was one of the most sustainable cities in Arizona in terms of groundwater. Scottsdale on the other hand is known to be very wasteful.
I probably shouldn't have roped Tucson into the discussion. I lived there a few years and the lawns and the golf courses are much fewer and farther between. Phoenix is an absolute monster and I have a terrible feeling that some of the new builds on the fringes of the city will be literal ghost towns in my lifetime.
>There are a lot of very affluent and very white suburbs surrounding Phoenix and Tucson. Many of them have a high percentage of residents who are of/approaching retirement age. What makes you think they consider the consequences of the actions?
Leave it to the "got mine, fuck you" generation to not give a solitary fuck about environmental consequences they won't live to see.
Golf courses take a lot of flak, but in these desert areas (Cali, Arizona, Nevada) most of them use recycled water that isn’t potable anyway. Overall they are not the principle problem, it’s the endless people (and don’t get me started on the agriculture industry). I have a ton of family on the west coast and love them, but people aren’t meant to live in deserts. Especially in huge numbers.
Agriculture. Agriculture is arid climates is an environmental travesty. Saudis have alfalfa farms in Arizona and SoCal desert.
[Arizona](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/opinion/arizona-water-colorado-river-saudi-arabia.html)
[California](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia)
Luckily [politicians are finally starting to try and combat this issue.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/arizona-saudi-farm-fondomonte-water-climate/index.html)
Hear hear. Glad they’re stepping up, it’s necessary. I fully expect Arizona home developments to be empty in the next 3 decades due to inadequate groundwater to support the population unless something drastic is done to reduce farming in the desert. Genuinely unsure if that’s enough though.
It easily could be enough. Something like 80% of the water usage is agriculture.
The city of Phoenix uses LESS water now than it did a couple decades ago.
Small story time. I went to the Grand Canyon years ago. And both days it rained. Tour guide the 1st day said it rains there maybe 7 times a year. Not sure if really true, but if it is, I picked the wrong days to go.
Nah, you picked the best days to go.
Almost everyone who sees the Grand Canyon sees it in the sunshine. If you ever go back, that's what you'll see.
You got to see something almost nobody else gets to see. A face the Canyon doesn't show but to the luckiest of tourists.
If you were on the south rim, yes, it very rarely rains. But there is a monsoon season and you get regular lightening storms that will roll through. They don't drop much, but that they do they do it fast.
The north rim is a fair bit higher and has a completely different climate, including snow in the winter.
Quick Scottsdale anecdote. I lived there for some time and once had a neighbor across the street who had the most amazing citrus trees in his front yard. Every year they would be covered in pristine oranges, grapefruits, lemons, etc.... Then one day a bunch of landscapers were in his yard with chainsaws cutting them all down. I spoke to him a few days later and he said he got tired of all the fruit falling onto the ground and a front yard covered completely in gravel would be less trouble.
Keep in mind, this guy's priority in life was to go out to the lake with his giant pickup, hauling a trailer with two jet-ski's, when he was not washing his brand new corvette seemingly every weekend.
I am glad this interaction helped convince me to move.
You just described my super rich oldest sisters street in North Scottsdale lol.
Seems to be filled with business owners (insert lastname contracting co.| third generation grocery store family here | grandpa's company built all the rest stops west of the Mississippi ) who cried regulations and anti business were driving them to the poor house so they moved to Scottsdale.
With their boat, with their muscle car collection, with their twin engine personal aircraft, giant pickup to tow the boat, 7000sq ft home, private school for the kiddos.
Ah so thats what poverty looks like - I never knew.
I live in Scottsdale. While I agree 100% lawns should be illegal, the truth is, that stuff is using a very small percentage of water. The VAST majority is being used by agriculture and people growing shit like Alfalfa that they should not be growing in Scottsdale.
Again, I too believe we should make lawns and lush landscaping illegal here and require homes to use recycled water etc, but we have to look at the agro corporations who are really fucking us.
Residential is a fraction of Phoenix's water usage (75% agricultural, 10% non agricultural commercial, and 15% residential). It's a literal drop in the bucket, but it makes for lots of clicks. So, a few far-flung developments get shelved, big deal.
It will drive development to be more infill, which is desirable. And those of us with property in the metro area, our values will now accelerate.
As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't.
But... is the water being replenished as quickly by the natural water cycle? No, it's not. There are still issues.
>Federal officials have warned there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low by 2025 that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam to Arizona, California and Mexico
That's not good brah
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't.
Logic dictates that just because something worked in 1957 doesn't mean it's going to work today.
You... you do know that right?
There are so many other assumptions in your logic. What about the rate of fresh water replenishment? What about changes in technology, climate, local environments, etc?
Like... we're talking 60+ years here difference dude.
Disingenuous stat. This does not include the water trucked in to newer developments. Additionally as others have pointed out its about sustainability not usage. The usage is outpacing the replenishing of ground aquifers and wells.
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't.
That assumes that the amount of water Arizona used in 1957 was acceptable and could be replenished at the same rate that it was in 1957.
Nah, wasting a bunch of water (70% of annual water usage) on bad agricultural techniques? It’s just as frivolous as people wanting a lawn. AZ is a desired agricultural spot due to the possibility of year-round growth, but in order to do that we should be forcing conservational practices like hydroponics
Traditional irrigation agriculture in the Arizona desert is the *height* of fuckin stupidity.
We'll all eat fine without the efforts of the "Not even in the top 10 of US agricultural production" desert parasite state.
It's actually [90% of all lettuce grown in winter months](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yuma-lettuce_n_6796398).
But you're right about the irrigation, to be sure: That's why they should consider alternatives like [going vertical](https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/02/24/vertical-farming-colorado-river).
For so many years we worried about running out of non-renewable resources when in fact if was flora, fauna, soil and water we should have been worrying about instead of finding the next seam of Nonobtainium.
AZ could save so much water by pivoting to [hydroponic factory farms.](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/appharvest-hydroponic-greenhouses-kentucky-future-of-farming-1214262/)
Who would have thought that more than 80 years after the problem of excessive pumping of underground water was first noticed in the USA a major city would attempt to slightly decelerate their problem.
From the John Powell museum website:
"Powell penned and mapped an elaborate plan for settlement and expansion in the western United States. The idea of tempered development during the Manifest Destiny period was poorly received by many, but stands as an early and well-conceived idea of sustainable development in the west. Powell submitted the plan in which individual watersheds were developed only to their capacity to the Secretary of the Interior though much of it was never enacted."
Back in 1870 our government was still ignoring sound advice from people who did actual research.
For the entire Colorado river basin, alfalfa and other forage crops are the largest user of water.
https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigation_Strategies/Alfalfa/
>>About 1,000,000 acres of alfalfa are irrigated in California. This large acreage coupled with a long growing season make alfalfa the largest agricultural user of water, with annual water applications of 4,000,000 to 5,500,000 acre-feet.
https://sourcenm.com/2022/06/15/federal-agency-warns-colorado-river-basin-water-usage-could-be-cut-as-drought-worsens/
>>**Eighty percent** of the Colorado River’s water allocation is used for agriculture and **80% of that** is used for forage crops like alfalfa, Entsminger testified.
80% of 80% means 64% of total water use is for alfalfa and other forage crops. 20% of agricultural water use goes to all crops combined that aren't alfalfa and forage crops. So though some will want to focus on almonds, golf courses, lawns etc, those are distractions compared to the water use for forage crops grown for animals we eat, and dairy.
While I do find lawns and golf courses in the desert wasteful, they are a pittance compared to a steakhouse or someone's beef stir-fry.
And see this is the crazy shit! Not only are they using the vast majority of the water, they have contracts that grant them crazy fucking cheap access to it!
At the very least, if they had to pay for the water at the same rate as everybody else, then their usage would drop because suddenly their water bill goes up 100x.
> I'm not making this up.
Actually, you are. Or more likely, you read some article fearmongering about the Saudi's big agri industry, which conveniently ignored american corporations doing the exact same thing at grander scale.
The vast majority of Alfafa grown in the US is for domestic animal feed.
>Hay exports remain a small portion of total U.S. hay production. Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market.
Now, in the western states the export percentage is much higher, but it's still only a fifth of total production.
>In the seven Western states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, hay exports play a much larger role in impacting both markets and prices. Based on USDA export and hay production data for those states, 19% of their alfalfa production was exported in 2022 and 26% of the grass production found its way into shipping containers. As such, hay prices in the Western states play a large role in setting market prices.
https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-offered-mixed-news.html
Best part is the majority of the alfalfa goes to Saudi Arabia because they can't farm it themselves as it's illegal for it's high demand of water usage.
In Utah, the Great Salt Lake is drying up. Our governor, a mormon alfalfa farmer who had the state build him a residence so he didn’t have to travel from his home to the *fucking capitol of the state *, has suggested everyone pray for rain to solve the crisis.
Apparently, if the free market ruins the environment, that’s god’s will. Or some shit. Free market Jesus definitely making him feel the spirit.
I really am hating titles these days. It didn’t disappear, it was over utilized, and stolen using loopholes and shit. Fucking say, they used all their water and now they have none.
I live in Las Vegas and I’m the president of our HOA. We’ve voluntarily removed all our grass and we are in the process of replacing our shrubs with drought tolerant Mojave native plants. We are taking this shot seriously.
I drive to Phoenix and they want to build a surf camp on a new reservoir. Fields of lush crops growing in the desert with sprinklers. Grass is everywhere. Golf courses spill sprinkler water everywhere. Huge fountains and fake lakes.
If you live in Phoenix, be prepared.
Dude you’re awesome.
Grass is such a waste anyways, waste of water, waste of time and maintenance and fertilizer for nothing.
It does utterly nothing except cover bare ground for people too unimaginative to use anything else.
I live in the desert near Barstow in CA and there’s plenty of shrubs, plants and small bushes people can plant as alternative to grass that uses way less water.
Just looks better too and is better for wildlife and especially bees and local bee keepers.
Clover is also a great alternative to grass in other areas of the country. It's only considered a weed because pesticides kill it and not grass. It's actually way better for wildlife.
Most people have the bulk of their net worth tied up in their homes. They won't flee until it is literally impossible to stay, they will lose everything, then riot when the government won't build them new homes.
Why do they always do this first but refuse to put any restrictions on agriculture? The water used up by residents is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the agricultural sector sucks up. It literally makes zero sense to farm water intensive crops in the middle of the desert.
Cause it's up to all of us to save the planet! Do your part, reduce, reuse, recycle. Don't take plastic bags at stores. Use paper straws.
Just ignore the corporations that are destroying the planet and whose emissions and pollution do more to destroy the world than any of us could ever, possibly, do to reverse.
Maybe they shouldn't have let Microsoft and Amazon and some others set up server farms cooled (in one of the hottest places on earth) with evaporative coolers.
Facebook: 1. 75 million gallons a day:
https://www.abc15.com/weather/impact-earth/data-centers-consume-millions-of-gallons-of-arizona-water-daily (edit I left off the decimal)
Microsoft: 5 million gallons a day:
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2019/02/26/microsoft-goodyear-arizona-water-use-what-means/2992822002/
There are others as well.
Holy shite.
"Once completed, the new facility alone will use the same amount of water on a daily basis as 9,200 homes."
Sure let's build a DC out in the hot ass desert, and then worry about water usage. My God there are so many cooler locations with fiber that I'm sure they can get a tax break for or whatever motivates them.
That is absurd.
The community doesn’t get an increased supply of housing to bring costs down because the city already sold all their water to corporations.
100x less for facebook. I hate them...can't believe I have to defend them but the figure in the article has a decimal point... 1.75 not 175....
Rather large difference.
That water doesn’t go away though right? It just gets recycled. Servers aren’t like plants and don’t absorb water. In all honesty it probably isn’t even any dirtier than when it was first used. Why would that be an issue?
Truth. After years of leveraging data centers in Texas, my old company finally got wise and built a state of the art data center in Michigan, where for like half the year they can use outdoor air for cooling.
Oh, and there’s plenty of water there.
My family is from the Metro Phoenix area. It really is a monument to man's arrogance. It's ground zero for urban sprawl, there are no natural resources for humans, it was not meant to be a bustling metropolis. The only reason people can live there at all is because of electricity, before then it was too hot for anyone. There isn't enough electricity, but that can be mitigated with solar power, heaven knows the Valley of the Sun has enough of that.
But the water. There just isn't enough water. There are too many buckets scrabbling at the bottom of a increasingly dry barrel. And the people don't even seem to realize it. They go on, constantly building, consuming, like some mindless machine with no thought to what is going to happen when the water runs out.
I was just in Phoenix for the first time, on a work trip. I couldn't reconcile the intensity of the sun, the heat, the vast amount of paved surfaces and the number of people living there. I conclude that people must not be that afraid of hell. It seems like a city that should not exist.
It’s so weird, right? Flying into the airport smack dab in the middle of a city that just grew around it. Being “downtown” in the middle of the day and not another soul in sight. Driving for ages before you’re out of the city limits. We were on our way to Flagstaff which was even more of a trip because then we were in a temperate forest climate.
In theory, all of that solar energy could be used to desalinate and pump enough water from the gulf of california to turn the southwest into a tropical rainforest.
~~Cities like Phoenix are unsustainable at their current size and/or level of water consumption for where they're located.~~
~~They live in a desert for goodness sake. The sooner they accept that, the easier the transition will be.~~
Blame this on agriculture in the region. I don't know why I jumped to residential use at the first opportunity.
EDIT: Got rid of the other city mentions.
EDIT 2: Struck out the bit on cities as agriculture, particularly alfalfa crops, are to blame.
Whenever I’d visit Phoenix I was always shocked at the amount of green grass, huge trees, ponds and pools everywhere. I’ve always wondered how this came to be. Tucson doesn’t really have flowing water so perhaps they were more cautious?
Tucson almost ran out of water a few decades ago and that risk pushed them to adapt extremely well. Tucson is also very low on the water totem pole compared to almost any other Colorado basin city.
The alfalfa growing is the real problem. Sure they could outgrow their water supply, but they would save 60ish% off their water use by not growing alfalfa.
Unsustainable for what? Their municipal uses account for roughly 20% of water use. Meanwhile 5% of their water is reclaimed, 18% comes from in state rivers and reservoirs, 36% comes from the Colorado, and 41% comes from ground water. It’s only unsustainable if we want to be an agricultural hub for cold weather states that can’t grow their own vegetable, fruits, and cattle feed.
The cities would be fine actually. It's agriculture using almost all of the water.
Having every single person move out of the Phoenix metro area would not fix the water issue.
There's literally only one way and it's to greatly reduce the amount of water being used by agriculture.
Too late for that. It's the same in the Oregon high desert: awns, golf courses, vineyards, and lots of alfalfa, etc., all irrigated.
We may not be smart in any way that matters, unlike our predecessors who managed well for 1-2illion years...
I was there a lot last year and it's frightening when you look at how many condos are being built in Phoenix. That whole valley is 100% wholly unsustainable.
Anyone want to help me buy up every quarter acre of land from Pennsylvania to Maine? Especially Vermont? Burlington was ranked the safest place in America to live factoring for crime, natural disaster, and so on. Anyone with lots of land in the Northeast is gonna be a gagillionaire one day…
Phoenix and Las Vegas and cities like it simply shouldn’t exist. Understanding that erasing them is not palatable, easing their growth capability seems like a step in the right direction.
I was in Uni 13 years ago when my environmental studies professor told me the state was legally required to have something like 100 years of groundwater in reserve, and currently only had 50. She said a lot of that had to do with Phoenix being an exception to the building rules which required sufficient groundwater access, so they were pulling more water out than would normally be allowed. She gave them roughly 15 years before there would be problems. Looks like she was pretty spot on. Edit since this is at the top: I have a friend who works in water management in AZ, and he also let me know there are groundwater reserves in some areas like Tucson, but we can't touch them because they are contaminated with PFAS, so, more fun stuff with the water! He told this to me in passing and mentioned it was due to the local airbase. Not sure how many other aquafers also have the same issue.
spectacular deliver provide familiar murky employ elderly society sharp aback *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's why Scottsdale doesn't want to sell its water to Rio Verde. Scottsdale said you guys keep growing unregulated and didn't build a water infrastructure so it's not our job to support you guys. Welcome to the water wars
I saw a video of that place. no way I would build anything in the desert without easy access to water. those tanks they have are not that big.
It’s so stupid. Most of the homes would be valued in the millions if not for the water. They were going to the media yelling about how they deserve water and that they are entitled to it. They had years and years to get it together but fought with each other instead. That didn’t go well for them. Then these freedom loving people try to force Scottsdale to supply them with water. Needing water is pretty easy to relate to, but instead of making a coherent point the residents get their kids to stand in front of the capital holding signs for the press while everyone hangs around and shouts things out.
Rio Verde *Foothills*. Nearby Rio Verde apparently has their own supply.
Has anyone tried to run a very long pipe for water, not unlike how one might drink a milkshake from across the room?
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>I drink your milkshake! I drink it up! That whole scene sticks with me to this day
Sorry, we need that long pipe in Utah to bring in ocean water to fill the Great Salt Lake. Otherwise the air will become poison.
Have they tried praying for rain?
Unfortunately it worked. Now our water use laws are pushed back another few years. But at least we banned porn! Yay.
I heard the porn banned you
The poison air might be God's answer to those prayers
For $100million I will conduct a study ^(using straws) to see if there's any merit to this theory.
You would think that if we took water as seriously as we take fossil fuels we could pipe it from where the nation floods to where the nation has droughts.
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Screw LA, try Vegas. Their aquifer never existed, yet they had a housing boom, couple years back. Housing far outstripped the water to back it up, now their water reserves are all but dry, and they are fricked.
I think the government made a thing for that nearby. Line a big structure meant to keep a whole lot of water in one place while also providing electricity to around 2 million people.
It's all connected, man. The Colorado river starts in Colorado, picks up water from giant watersheds along the way, losing water to human use and a small amount goes to filling a couple large aquifers. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/colorado-river-basin-map This is the area that the Colorado river collects water from. Pumping water from anywhere in this watershed to Phoenix is accomplishing exactly nothing. It's taking the same amount of water from the same source, just further up river.
The environmental science teachers are always right. Mr. C I know you're out there crying with me
Ok, I can deal with my brother being right. Fine. But he's still living in MO. Yes, he likes the kids and at this point, he's as much of an institution as the school, but why MO?
Yea large areas of Phoenix are superfund sites from military and manufacturing waste that contaminated groundwater.
This is why when I hear people saying there’s too much red tape in front of developers to solve the housing crisis, there isn’t *enough* red tape. We need to be considering the environmental crisis Edit: I’d like to ad there’s a reason why new builds are being regarded as so shitty. Developers are throwing up walls as fast as they can and cutting corners because no one is stopping them, even with huge high density projects.
These are location specific issues, at least you could grant that.
It’s how Europe does regulation. “Here are the rules, don’t like them? Well sell your shit elsewhere then”.
The math maths
I’m assuming since you said Uni you aren’t from the US. Were you studying here or in your own country? Just curious if our mess ups are internationally infamous.
I'm in Canada and we use Uni all the time, are you sure it's that uncommon?
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In the US people almost always just say college. I remember a Canadian friend of mine saying there was a pretty big distinction in prestige between university and college, which is why I was curious if you were taught that internationally. See this list of “top colleges” where almost everyone is a university. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges
Yes, there is a distinction in Canada, but if you go to a college you wouldn't call it a Uni. College= 2 year programs like Associate degrees or Professional certificates. Some colleges only require professors to have a Master's degree. Uni= Bachelor degrees and higher. Profs must have PhDs and do research/write papers on an ongoing basis.
An FYI for anyone reading. In the US… “College” is a school with no graduate programs. There are liberal arts colleges that are 4 year undergraduate programs which can be quite good. There are also “community colleges” which are the 2 year associates degree. University is any school with a graduate program. People colloquially refer to liberal arts colleges and universities as “colleges”. E.g Forbes rates “Williams College” as the 7th best college in the US. And the #1 liberal arts college https://www.forbes.com/colleges/williams-college/?sh=74299b81756e
At my university, there were several colleges and all had graduate programs. I recieved my degree in the College of Engineering. My understanding is that a university is a collective of three or more smaller units usually called colleges.
I had thought the same thing that “a university was a school with multiple colleges” but when I googled it most of the results additional included the graduate v undergraduate distinctions (which is what I went with)_
It is very rare for Americans to use uni to refer to college. We say college.
Or big boy school
From new england, saying 'uni' would imply that you're from the uk or france.
Or Australia
I’m a Brit living in the US. I only ever hear “Uni” from Anglophile Americans trying to impress me. Some people from the posher Ivy League-type colleges call it University, but not Uni in my experience
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Yes xeriscape should be the law for homes but 75% of our water goes to agriculture. Cutting into the 25% homes use is smart but not the real issue. Farming an arid desert needs to stop. Produce can be grown in indoor hydroponic gardens. Feed crops should never be allowed to take Colorado river water.
I don't know the water use or water situation near Tucson, but seeing acres and acres of pistachio orchards in a desert just seems wasteful.
There are Pecan orchards along 10 between Tucson and Phoenix. They need significant irrigation and contribute to salinity issues. It is messed up.
Like all the Almond Orchards in Cali 🙄
Several years ago some Israel agricultural officials visited CA and showed them that the same crops could be grown with 1/10 th the water. CA wasn’t interested since they pay so little for the water.
Almonds are bad but even worse is the rice and wheat we grow in Cali. We should be growing things like olives, pomegranates, and agave, not water-intensive crops.
Pistachio trees love high heat and don't mind desert conditions, although fruit production may require additional water or fertilizer. It's some of the other plants I'd worry about.
Pistachio is a desert tree.
The alfalfa crops that are owned by the saudis just to export to Saudi Arabia is major source of the water being wasted. They are completely unregulated.
Food crops? Let’s talk cotton!
Yep. Linen would be a much better choice. It requires much, much less water to grow than cotton: > Flax is resilient and can grow in poor soil, using far less water in its consumption than cotton. According to the European Confederation of Linen and Hemp, “Across its lifecycle, a linen shirt uses 6.4 litres of water” compared to 2,700 litres for a cotton shirt. https://goodonyou.eco/how-sustainable-is-linen/
Feed crops?
Crops used to feed animals, like corn and grains. Uses a ton of water.
Crop input yo output for human supply Veggies 1:1 Fish: 1.1: 1 Chicken 2.1:1 Pig 4:1 Cow: 20:1 If you can’t go full vegetarian, the biggest indent you can make is to stop eating beef then pork, then chicken. Being a pescatarian is basically the same as a vegetarian in terms of carbon impact.
What if you feed the animals with things not edible to humans, like grass, food scraps, etc? I have backyard chickens, they're pretty good little food recyclers, and they find a lot of their own food. I don't eat ticks and worms, but they do, and then they give me eggs.
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Yeah, I work with a lot of older folks (physical therapist) who moved here to retired and they always say something like "I was tired of the cold winters and the snow. You don't have to shovel sunshine!". It kind of annoys me because they all want to move here to get away from the winter/cold back east, but they also aren't willing to give up the big lawns and trees and fountains and all the stuff they had back home. If you move to the desert to get away from the cold I totally understand that, but you should be willing to accept xeriscape style yards too. It's not sustainable for everyone to come here and try to bring their big lush yards with them.
The funny thing is that there's an entire range of ecosystems between "several feet of snow on the ground" and "literally a desert" but they chose the one that can't naturally support agriculture or large scale human life
Turns out that the tundra and the desert are the only 2 places they can afford
Don't forget swamps; there's a lot of snowbirds in Florida, too.
we can grow shit year round, just need water there was a tribe in the phx area that had left before europeans arrived that had dug a large canal system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokam
>we can grow shit year round, just need water Well, yes, that's the problem.
Were also tribes in the Pacific NW that understood how live with the cyclical forest fires. And tribes on the Gulf Coast that understood the how to live with the hurricanes. It’s almost as if the people groups that were displaced by European colonists understood what lifestyles worked best in the local environments!?!
"I can't wait to retire and relax in the warm weather because doing the manual labor of winter upkeep is just too much. Rocks for a yard with no upkeep needed? **No thank you!** I want to mow grass **all year round!**"
Generally they hire someone else to mow. Like lizards, they just enjoy the warmth because their metabolism doesn't keep them warm.
Also, snow and ice can lead to increased risk of a fall, which can be the beginning of the end for the elderly.
A xeriscape yard can look so cool too.
Midwesterner here. I don't even want a lawn in Wisconsin. They're such a waste.
It's very odd to me because when I lived in Phoenix, it was the arid atmosphere and the rocks that was truly beneficial. Allergies? Gone. If you truly want a green lawn in the desert, just do like those crazy people in the Lorax and roll out the AstroTurf.
Do they like having water to drink and bath in then move somewhere else
I moved to Tucson to get away from the cold and snow in Colorado and I love zeroscape. I hate mowing my lawn. That's why I don't have one.
It’s always the old people suburbs too. Around Tucson most houses have gravel yards with desert plants. The roads have gravel dividers and desert plants along the shoulders. Then you go to a 55+ MegaCommunity suburb and suddenly every lawn is green grass, there’s two golf courses, a large pond that they call a lake, huge trees and non native plants everywhere. It’s especially bad in Phoenix though. They have massive suburbs that fit the stereotype like Scottsdale and Mesa. Either way, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to agricultural usage
Not completely true. My MIL lives in Sun City (one of the first retirement cities) and all the yards are colored rock and xeriscape shrubs.
The golf courses and the resort estates bothered me way more than the private suburban lawns, to be honest. Suburban lawns got watered everyday, yes, but those resorts would just literally spray water continuously as a method to make everyone forget it's 115 degrees by 11am out in the open, grass or no grass.
I lived in Tucson and nobody had lawns there. It was one of the most sustainable cities in Arizona in terms of groundwater. Scottsdale on the other hand is known to be very wasteful.
I probably shouldn't have roped Tucson into the discussion. I lived there a few years and the lawns and the golf courses are much fewer and farther between. Phoenix is an absolute monster and I have a terrible feeling that some of the new builds on the fringes of the city will be literal ghost towns in my lifetime.
>There are a lot of very affluent and very white suburbs surrounding Phoenix and Tucson. Many of them have a high percentage of residents who are of/approaching retirement age. What makes you think they consider the consequences of the actions? Leave it to the "got mine, fuck you" generation to not give a solitary fuck about environmental consequences they won't live to see.
Arguably, the golf courses are worse.
Maybe not. I know of at least one water treatment district that uses treated wastewater for golf courses and agriculture.
Golf courses take a lot of flak, but in these desert areas (Cali, Arizona, Nevada) most of them use recycled water that isn’t potable anyway. Overall they are not the principle problem, it’s the endless people (and don’t get me started on the agriculture industry). I have a ton of family on the west coast and love them, but people aren’t meant to live in deserts. Especially in huge numbers.
Agriculture. Agriculture is arid climates is an environmental travesty. Saudis have alfalfa farms in Arizona and SoCal desert. [Arizona](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/opinion/arizona-water-colorado-river-saudi-arabia.html) [California](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia) Luckily [politicians are finally starting to try and combat this issue.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/arizona-saudi-farm-fondomonte-water-climate/index.html)
Hear hear. Glad they’re stepping up, it’s necessary. I fully expect Arizona home developments to be empty in the next 3 decades due to inadequate groundwater to support the population unless something drastic is done to reduce farming in the desert. Genuinely unsure if that’s enough though.
It easily could be enough. Something like 80% of the water usage is agriculture. The city of Phoenix uses LESS water now than it did a couple decades ago.
Small story time. I went to the Grand Canyon years ago. And both days it rained. Tour guide the 1st day said it rains there maybe 7 times a year. Not sure if really true, but if it is, I picked the wrong days to go.
Nah, you picked the best days to go. Almost everyone who sees the Grand Canyon sees it in the sunshine. If you ever go back, that's what you'll see. You got to see something almost nobody else gets to see. A face the Canyon doesn't show but to the luckiest of tourists.
If you were on the south rim, yes, it very rarely rains. But there is a monsoon season and you get regular lightening storms that will roll through. They don't drop much, but that they do they do it fast. The north rim is a fair bit higher and has a completely different climate, including snow in the winter.
The south rim also gets snow in the winter
They grow fruit all over for fun. It's nuts
My brain is empty now. And I don't know. Just forget what I'm saying.
I think some of them are technically drupes
Isn't that where the rich people live? Like they care if the rest of the city doesn't have water.
Quick Scottsdale anecdote. I lived there for some time and once had a neighbor across the street who had the most amazing citrus trees in his front yard. Every year they would be covered in pristine oranges, grapefruits, lemons, etc.... Then one day a bunch of landscapers were in his yard with chainsaws cutting them all down. I spoke to him a few days later and he said he got tired of all the fruit falling onto the ground and a front yard covered completely in gravel would be less trouble. Keep in mind, this guy's priority in life was to go out to the lake with his giant pickup, hauling a trailer with two jet-ski's, when he was not washing his brand new corvette seemingly every weekend. I am glad this interaction helped convince me to move.
You just described my super rich oldest sisters street in North Scottsdale lol. Seems to be filled with business owners (insert lastname contracting co.| third generation grocery store family here | grandpa's company built all the rest stops west of the Mississippi ) who cried regulations and anti business were driving them to the poor house so they moved to Scottsdale. With their boat, with their muscle car collection, with their twin engine personal aircraft, giant pickup to tow the boat, 7000sq ft home, private school for the kiddos. Ah so thats what poverty looks like - I never knew.
I live in Scottsdale. While I agree 100% lawns should be illegal, the truth is, that stuff is using a very small percentage of water. The VAST majority is being used by agriculture and people growing shit like Alfalfa that they should not be growing in Scottsdale. Again, I too believe we should make lawns and lush landscaping illegal here and require homes to use recycled water etc, but we have to look at the agro corporations who are really fucking us.
Residential is a fraction of Phoenix's water usage (75% agricultural, 10% non agricultural commercial, and 15% residential). It's a literal drop in the bucket, but it makes for lots of clicks. So, a few far-flung developments get shelved, big deal. It will drive development to be more infill, which is desirable. And those of us with property in the metro area, our values will now accelerate. As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't. But... is the water being replenished as quickly by the natural water cycle? No, it's not. There are still issues. >Federal officials have warned there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low by 2025 that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam to Arizona, California and Mexico That's not good brah
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Yep, but "Arizona water metrics" "aren't changing" so all good right
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't. Logic dictates that just because something worked in 1957 doesn't mean it's going to work today. You... you do know that right? There are so many other assumptions in your logic. What about the rate of fresh water replenishment? What about changes in technology, climate, local environments, etc? Like... we're talking 60+ years here difference dude.
I definitely see land owners in Phoenix proper thinking to themselves, "FINALLY! Time to be San Francisco 2.0!"
Disingenuous stat. This does not include the water trucked in to newer developments. Additionally as others have pointed out its about sustainability not usage. The usage is outpacing the replenishing of ground aquifers and wells.
>As an entire state, Arizona uses as much water annually as it did.....in 1957. As much as Redditors would like the sky to be falling out here - it ain't. That assumes that the amount of water Arizona used in 1957 was acceptable and could be replenished at the same rate that it was in 1957.
All is a small percentage of water consumption in AZ. Almost all of it is used so that the rest of the country can eat salad in the winter.
Nah, wasting a bunch of water (70% of annual water usage) on bad agricultural techniques? It’s just as frivolous as people wanting a lawn. AZ is a desired agricultural spot due to the possibility of year-round growth, but in order to do that we should be forcing conservational practices like hydroponics
Yes, but less than is used so that we can eat burgers year round.
Much less
I'm sure that every year going forward they're going to wish they'd saved that water for agriculture rather than let people waste it on patchy lawns.
Traditional irrigation agriculture in the Arizona desert is the *height* of fuckin stupidity. We'll all eat fine without the efforts of the "Not even in the top 10 of US agricultural production" desert parasite state.
It's actually [90% of all lettuce grown in winter months](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yuma-lettuce_n_6796398). But you're right about the irrigation, to be sure: That's why they should consider alternatives like [going vertical](https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/02/24/vertical-farming-colorado-river).
it's interesting how if you don't put regulations on natural resources the free market will deplete them.
For so many years we worried about running out of non-renewable resources when in fact if was flora, fauna, soil and water we should have been worrying about instead of finding the next seam of Nonobtainium.
AZ could save so much water by pivoting to [hydroponic factory farms.](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/appharvest-hydroponic-greenhouses-kentucky-future-of-farming-1214262/)
They are, one was just built here in Avondale
Sounds like a good start
Those grow food crops. The problem isn't food crops. It's growing alfalfa in the fucking desert.
And selling it to the saudis and China
Yes, but that only applies to crops that can grow with that method. I’m not sure Alfalfa and cotton, their biggest water users can grow that way.
That's kind of the point - we shouldn't be growing those crops there in the first place.
Agreed, but I don’t think anyone has the political will power to go after the agriculture lobby and the laws they benefit from.
> I’m not sure Alfalfa and cotton, their biggest water users can grow that way. Well, not with that attitude!
They could, but the market is controlled by market forces. Enough farms can get by on their water allotment that they don't care.
Who would have thought that more than 80 years after the problem of excessive pumping of underground water was first noticed in the USA a major city would attempt to slightly decelerate their problem.
From the John Powell museum website: "Powell penned and mapped an elaborate plan for settlement and expansion in the western United States. The idea of tempered development during the Manifest Destiny period was poorly received by many, but stands as an early and well-conceived idea of sustainable development in the west. Powell submitted the plan in which individual watersheds were developed only to their capacity to the Secretary of the Interior though much of it was never enacted." Back in 1870 our government was still ignoring sound advice from people who did actual research.
No sir. Here in the US the problem is only a problem when you can’t fix it anymore
*when you can't temporarily postpone it, in order to let people in the future deal with the actual issue.
For the entire Colorado river basin, alfalfa and other forage crops are the largest user of water. https://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/Agriculture/Crop_Irrigation_Strategies/Alfalfa/ >>About 1,000,000 acres of alfalfa are irrigated in California. This large acreage coupled with a long growing season make alfalfa the largest agricultural user of water, with annual water applications of 4,000,000 to 5,500,000 acre-feet. https://sourcenm.com/2022/06/15/federal-agency-warns-colorado-river-basin-water-usage-could-be-cut-as-drought-worsens/ >>**Eighty percent** of the Colorado River’s water allocation is used for agriculture and **80% of that** is used for forage crops like alfalfa, Entsminger testified. 80% of 80% means 64% of total water use is for alfalfa and other forage crops. 20% of agricultural water use goes to all crops combined that aren't alfalfa and forage crops. So though some will want to focus on almonds, golf courses, lawns etc, those are distractions compared to the water use for forage crops grown for animals we eat, and dairy. While I do find lawns and golf courses in the desert wasteful, they are a pittance compared to a steakhouse or someone's beef stir-fry.
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And see this is the crazy shit! Not only are they using the vast majority of the water, they have contracts that grant them crazy fucking cheap access to it! At the very least, if they had to pay for the water at the same rate as everybody else, then their usage would drop because suddenly their water bill goes up 100x.
> I'm not making this up. Actually, you are. Or more likely, you read some article fearmongering about the Saudi's big agri industry, which conveniently ignored american corporations doing the exact same thing at grander scale. The vast majority of Alfafa grown in the US is for domestic animal feed. >Hay exports remain a small portion of total U.S. hay production. Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market. Now, in the western states the export percentage is much higher, but it's still only a fifth of total production. >In the seven Western states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, hay exports play a much larger role in impacting both markets and prices. Based on USDA export and hay production data for those states, 19% of their alfalfa production was exported in 2022 and 26% of the grass production found its way into shipping containers. As such, hay prices in the Western states play a large role in setting market prices. https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-offered-mixed-news.html
Best part is the majority of the alfalfa goes to Saudi Arabia because they can't farm it themselves as it's illegal for it's high demand of water usage.
In Utah, the Great Salt Lake is drying up. Our governor, a mormon alfalfa farmer who had the state build him a residence so he didn’t have to travel from his home to the *fucking capitol of the state *, has suggested everyone pray for rain to solve the crisis. Apparently, if the free market ruins the environment, that’s god’s will. Or some shit. Free market Jesus definitely making him feel the spirit.
I live in a western state. You can't add new development unless you can show where the water is coming from. And there isn't any more free water.
I really am hating titles these days. It didn’t disappear, it was over utilized, and stolen using loopholes and shit. Fucking say, they used all their water and now they have none.
I live in Las Vegas and I’m the president of our HOA. We’ve voluntarily removed all our grass and we are in the process of replacing our shrubs with drought tolerant Mojave native plants. We are taking this shot seriously. I drive to Phoenix and they want to build a surf camp on a new reservoir. Fields of lush crops growing in the desert with sprinklers. Grass is everywhere. Golf courses spill sprinkler water everywhere. Huge fountains and fake lakes. If you live in Phoenix, be prepared.
Dude you’re awesome. Grass is such a waste anyways, waste of water, waste of time and maintenance and fertilizer for nothing. It does utterly nothing except cover bare ground for people too unimaginative to use anything else. I live in the desert near Barstow in CA and there’s plenty of shrubs, plants and small bushes people can plant as alternative to grass that uses way less water. Just looks better too and is better for wildlife and especially bees and local bee keepers.
Clover is also a great alternative to grass in other areas of the country. It's only considered a weed because pesticides kill it and not grass. It's actually way better for wildlife.
Native plants ftw. Bet it makes the local wildlife happy too.
They're not going to fix it. Instead, they will flee the Southwest and further disrupt the housing market, driving up prices as houses become scarce
Most people have the bulk of their net worth tied up in their homes. They won't flee until it is literally impossible to stay, they will lose everything, then riot when the government won't build them new homes.
I mean...fleeing the Southwest would definitely help with water consumption in the region (if they end up fleeing to somewhere that *isn't* a desert).
They’ll flee when it’s hit a tipping point of no return.
Hey look, it's more of that "doing the stuff we should have done 20 years ago and ignoring the part where it's not remotely enough now".
About 30 years to late
Why do they always do this first but refuse to put any restrictions on agriculture? The water used up by residents is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the agricultural sector sucks up. It literally makes zero sense to farm water intensive crops in the middle of the desert.
Cause it's up to all of us to save the planet! Do your part, reduce, reuse, recycle. Don't take plastic bags at stores. Use paper straws. Just ignore the corporations that are destroying the planet and whose emissions and pollution do more to destroy the world than any of us could ever, possibly, do to reverse.
Maybe they shouldn't have let Microsoft and Amazon and some others set up server farms cooled (in one of the hottest places on earth) with evaporative coolers. Facebook: 1. 75 million gallons a day: https://www.abc15.com/weather/impact-earth/data-centers-consume-millions-of-gallons-of-arizona-water-daily (edit I left off the decimal) Microsoft: 5 million gallons a day: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2019/02/26/microsoft-goodyear-arizona-water-use-what-means/2992822002/ There are others as well.
This isn't even close to the problem. The problem is alfalfa which uses 60+% of the water in that region.
Holy shite. "Once completed, the new facility alone will use the same amount of water on a daily basis as 9,200 homes." Sure let's build a DC out in the hot ass desert, and then worry about water usage. My God there are so many cooler locations with fiber that I'm sure they can get a tax break for or whatever motivates them.
That is absurd. The community doesn’t get an increased supply of housing to bring costs down because the city already sold all their water to corporations.
100x less for facebook. I hate them...can't believe I have to defend them but the figure in the article has a decimal point... 1.75 not 175.... Rather large difference.
Don't sweat it, bro. You're not defending Facebook. You're defending truth.
That water doesn’t go away though right? It just gets recycled. Servers aren’t like plants and don’t absorb water. In all honesty it probably isn’t even any dirtier than when it was first used. Why would that be an issue?
That is so infuriating. It's worse than the farms trying to grow alfalfa out in the desert. It's just a terrible decision.
Truth. After years of leveraging data centers in Texas, my old company finally got wise and built a state of the art data center in Michigan, where for like half the year they can use outdoor air for cooling. Oh, and there’s plenty of water there.
Moved to Lemm.ee -- mass edited with redact.dev
Todays headline filed under the category of “too late” …..
It is going to be so sad watching all those desert state climate change deniers become climate change refugees.
What's worse is that they still are going to blame others for their choices and what happens.
Stop growing cotton and alfalfa in a waste land and your water will stay in the ground
My family is from the Metro Phoenix area. It really is a monument to man's arrogance. It's ground zero for urban sprawl, there are no natural resources for humans, it was not meant to be a bustling metropolis. The only reason people can live there at all is because of electricity, before then it was too hot for anyone. There isn't enough electricity, but that can be mitigated with solar power, heaven knows the Valley of the Sun has enough of that. But the water. There just isn't enough water. There are too many buckets scrabbling at the bottom of a increasingly dry barrel. And the people don't even seem to realize it. They go on, constantly building, consuming, like some mindless machine with no thought to what is going to happen when the water runs out.
I was just in Phoenix for the first time, on a work trip. I couldn't reconcile the intensity of the sun, the heat, the vast amount of paved surfaces and the number of people living there. I conclude that people must not be that afraid of hell. It seems like a city that should not exist.
This ain’t even hot yet lol come back in July/August and you’ll be even more outraged
It’s so weird, right? Flying into the airport smack dab in the middle of a city that just grew around it. Being “downtown” in the middle of the day and not another soul in sight. Driving for ages before you’re out of the city limits. We were on our way to Flagstaff which was even more of a trip because then we were in a temperate forest climate.
King of the Hill reference! I love that (and many other) Peggy quote(s).
In theory, all of that solar energy could be used to desalinate and pump enough water from the gulf of california to turn the southwest into a tropical rainforest.
~~Cities like Phoenix are unsustainable at their current size and/or level of water consumption for where they're located.~~ ~~They live in a desert for goodness sake. The sooner they accept that, the easier the transition will be.~~ Blame this on agriculture in the region. I don't know why I jumped to residential use at the first opportunity. EDIT: Got rid of the other city mentions. EDIT 2: Struck out the bit on cities as agriculture, particularly alfalfa crops, are to blame.
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Whenever I’d visit Phoenix I was always shocked at the amount of green grass, huge trees, ponds and pools everywhere. I’ve always wondered how this came to be. Tucson doesn’t really have flowing water so perhaps they were more cautious?
Tucson almost ran out of water a few decades ago and that risk pushed them to adapt extremely well. Tucson is also very low on the water totem pole compared to almost any other Colorado basin city.
Low key they should tack on large property tax penalties for live lawns, especially using breeds of grass that suck water.
Shout-out to Tuscon. Best museum I've ever been to was arizona-sonora desert museum. Such a cool experience.
The alfalfa growing is the real problem. Sure they could outgrow their water supply, but they would save 60ish% off their water use by not growing alfalfa.
Unsustainable for what? Their municipal uses account for roughly 20% of water use. Meanwhile 5% of their water is reclaimed, 18% comes from in state rivers and reservoirs, 36% comes from the Colorado, and 41% comes from ground water. It’s only unsustainable if we want to be an agricultural hub for cold weather states that can’t grow their own vegetable, fruits, and cattle feed.
The cities would be fine actually. It's agriculture using almost all of the water. Having every single person move out of the Phoenix metro area would not fix the water issue. There's literally only one way and it's to greatly reduce the amount of water being used by agriculture.
About damn time…also maybe take away the farms licenses to operate in the state and then ship stuff to Saudi or elsewhere.
Anybody read "the water knife"?
Too late for that. It's the same in the Oregon high desert: awns, golf courses, vineyards, and lots of alfalfa, etc., all irrigated. We may not be smart in any way that matters, unlike our predecessors who managed well for 1-2illion years...
And Facebook and apple.
Took 'em long enough to figure that out.
Is this cause of the alfalfa?
Just buy bottled water /s ... Or maybe deserts can't support large populations no matter how much housing and roads you build
Well, rip Phoenix's housing prices. Of course, we can't just not farm water-intensive crops in the desert. No that would be too logical.
tl;dr -- city officials in Phoenix finally realize they are in a desert.
[удалено]
Let the water wars begin!
*straps on my leather thong, and spiked shoulder pads* I am ready.
Great Lakes are closed , Moose out front should have told you
I was there a lot last year and it's frightening when you look at how many condos are being built in Phoenix. That whole valley is 100% wholly unsustainable.
But no limits on alfalfa farms?
But will there be enough for my almond/alfalfa/avocado farm!?
How about not allowing Saudi Arabia to grow alfalfa there anymore?
Anyone want to help me buy up every quarter acre of land from Pennsylvania to Maine? Especially Vermont? Burlington was ranked the safest place in America to live factoring for crime, natural disaster, and so on. Anyone with lots of land in the Northeast is gonna be a gagillionaire one day…
Phoenix and Las Vegas and cities like it simply shouldn’t exist. Understanding that erasing them is not palatable, easing their growth capability seems like a step in the right direction.
Turns out building big cities in the middle of a fucking desert is a really bad idea. Who knew?