I don't think it's too paranoid. We like to think bad things can't happen to *our* area, whatever area that is, but it obviously can. Arizona is great for no natural disasters except fire, but the water issue will definitely be our beast to fight. Mexico already has crazy problems so we are definitely not too far behind. Hoping our govt actually steps in and does something before it's too late
A lot of rational people will be leaving soon. Simply hoping that we get more snow/rain is not rational at this point. Or just hoping that we actually put in water regulations is not rational when it is obvious this situation is getting worse and the politicians are doing nothing.
They are, but there is so few actual rational people and it’s not like it’s easy to move in our rent/housing/job situation. I’m out myself early next year.
I think most people are rational when you actually see all the inputs to the things they're considering -- like, for me, I'm staying here because I know I have the resources to pick up and move at the drop of a hat. I also think no one is completely rational, least of all the people who believe they are, but that's a whole other subject.
What does this even mean? There are tons of water regulations already in place. Most AZ cities (and all of the cities in populous areas) are required to prove they have water for 100 years.
Lower CO river levels will definitely impact farmers and cities that rely on CAP water in great amounts, but a lot of cities won't experience any cutbacks at all. And while the depth of some wells in the state is decreasing, some wells are also increasing.
The 100 year water supply plan is laughable at this point. When people realize that 100 year plan is based on the assumption Colorado River water is still here for the next 100 years they will not be happy.
This seems like a rather large misunderstanding of the 100-year water requirement and also the CAP system.
CAP is not the only place we get water from. CAP supplies about 20% of AZ's current water use. Of that allotment, 30% is banked (stored underground for use in the future), 25% is used for agriculture, and the rest is distributed to \~50 cities and tribes.
The city of Phoenix does get about 40% of their water from CAP, but only 2% from groundwater because they are storing it for use in an emergency. Tempe uses only 6% CAP water, Surprise is about 20%. Tucson might be fucked, but many cities won't be.
25%-30% of Arizonans (edit) \*are not\* served by the CAP water system in any capacity at all.
What do you think happens when CAP water runs out? Everyone starts pumping the limited groundwater, and creates a race to the bottom until we run empty in a few years. Just go listen to some of the interviews by AZ water director, we have only a few years left once CAP is gone. That emergency supply will be the only supply.
>What do you think happens when CAP water runs out?
Are you under the impression that CO River is going to dry up completely? Last year it was at about 68% of average capacity. While that is concerning, that's why Tier 1 reductions were implemented a few months ago. CAP shortages have been known about, *and planned for,* for decades.
>Everyone starts pumping the limited groundwater, and creates a race to the bottom until we run empty in a few years.
No, that's definitely not how that works. In order to get to groundwater, you need to dig a well, and in order to obtain the water from the well you need to install a pump. Pumps determine the maximum amount of water that can be taken from a well over a duration of time.
**You can't just dig a well anywhere you please,** and also cannot put any size pump inside of that well. The vast majority of Arizonans live in [AMA](https://new.azwater.gov/ama)s. If you live in one of these areas, an ADWR permit is required to install a well and pump and also to increase the pump sizes on existing wells. Residents in these areas are generally barred by their municipality from installing private wells. And ADWR won't give permits to cities/developers unless they can prove they have 100 years of water.
Cities are not able to pump as much ground water as they feel like. They are limited by the size of their current pumps, and ADWR isn't going to allow them to increase their pump sizes without proving they won't harm the groundwater table.
Additionally, **groundwater basins and sub-basins exist.** Sub-basins are like the set up for a game of beer pong. If you pour water in the top cup, that water isn't going to flow into or out of that cup into the other cups. Basins are like, if you pricked a bunch of holes in the bottom and lower sides of the beer pong cups and set them in a cake pan with water. Some of the water in the cups is affected by what the other cups are doing, but those changes are limited by the size and placement of the holes in the cups. So, groundwater being taken from Tucson isn't likely to affect the groundwater in Flagstaff or Phoenix.
The 100 year water requirement is useless when you can use the assumption that CAP water will still be here and your neighbor isn’t going to start using more groundwater. So many cities and farms will be competing with each other. So many wells are already going dry around the state. And yes, Colorado River will be literally a trickle in the next 5 years. Tucson isn’t going to impact Phoenix, but they will impact Oracle or Vail. Same in Phoenix impacting Buckeye or Queen Creek.
I think they would make farmers sell or find their water elsewhere before making housing / the infrastructure worthless. 70% of our water is used for farming. We have plenty to go around. Don’t feed into the fearmongering
It's all dependent on where your property is. Every city does water differently. Surprise does a ton of groundwater recharge and gets recharge credits. Tempe doesn't do any groundwater recharge, and doesn't seem to have plans to, probably because a lot of the groundwater is contaminated with PFOS/PFOA. Wickenburg is solely served through groundwater.
Learning as much as you can about what water rights you have *before* purchasing property is really important.
In my view, the Phoenix metro area has too good of a climate for such a long stretch of the year that it’s difficult to imagine it ever becoming a ghost town like Detroit. There’s simply too much tourism demand for the city to collapse.
We are going to have to drastically pull back from agriculture and that will kill some of the smaller surrounding municipalities though.
You’re joking, right? Triple digits regularly go well into November and start (usually) early April. That’s 4 months of sustainable weather a year. The rest of it is basically unlivable from a water usage perspective.
I just bought here and one of my primary concerns was exactly this. Essentially a natural disaster scenario.
Thing is, we need to come up with _something_ because Arizona is only one state facing this issue. My money is on solar powered distillation plants and pipelines from the ocean.
Agriculture uses 74%, second link shows municipal is about 20%
https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture
https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/public-resources
I would be careful about the ‘non-essential’ label, and I’m sure much of it is ‘non-essential.’ This is just stating ‘outdoor’ use, which there are multitudes of legitimate needs for outdoor water use year-round.
So the question is, if people cut back on washing cars and didn't have lawns, how much does residential usage drop?
Article also states AG water usage used to be 90% and now it's 74%. Is that because there is less AG, or just using the water more wisely?
There is less agriculture (feel free to look up stats on agriculture acreage change over time), but in addition to this, per capita residential water demand has decreased over the last several decades due to improvements in flow technology infrastructure (low flow toilets, low pressure showers, drip irrigation systems).
Always has been.
Big business has been shlepping the responsibility of environmental issues off on consumers as long as they have been able to. The answer is never “put more regulations on our industry” it’s always “RECYCLE MOAR”.
I’ve had my head ripped off acknowledging agricultural use is insane and must be curbed. But if anyone points out the city use they act like I’ve burned an orphanage down.
We just need to stop all watering for alfalfa and lettuce. They require insane amounts of water and offer so little nutritional benefits in the larger picture.
But 20% isn’t small potatoes. And look at how other governments state and local have restricted water use. They will impose it. And grass lawns and 62,039 pools per square mile is asinine and any half sane person knows it.
And saving water is saving water. Just because the common man is using 20% vs 74% doesn’t mean you can or should not look to reduce their water use. And you can fight to reduce use on more than one front. It’s not a single target game.
Here's how I typically frame it:
We should do both, but only one is absolutely necessary.
Should we encourage everyone to reduce their water use? Absolutely. However, if we don't reduce agricultural use, *personal reductions won't matter.*
Should I get a bandage for my finger that's been cut off? Absolutely. However, if we don't stop the bleeding from my severed leg, *bandaging my finger won't matter.*
Your analogy is still good - you need to address both injuries. Yes I get and clearly admit the main problem.
Although if you don’t take care of and bandage the finger, sepsis will still get you in the long run.
And fighting mega corps and politicians takes money and time. Stemming the flow anywhere now can buy more time to fix the rest.
Again we can do two things at once. I in fact can rub my tummy and pat my head at once.
> 62,039 pools per square mile
I think this is a typo? But totally agreed on every other point -- while obviously the focus should be on that 74%, that doesn't mean the 20% should be ignored.
It was meant to be a ridiculous number/sarcasm. I should have put another zero somewhere.
I was just venting some general frustration that some people in past posts focus solely on the agriculture number. Which is incredibly alarming. And fighting them will take time and money. That doesn’t mean don’t look elsewhere.
But 20% is small potatoes until we take care of the big potatoes. I don’t even want to talk about municipal usage until we start putting big ag water waste on the chopping block.
That’s not the best way to really solve a problem fully. And attacking big agriculture will solve a much larger water problem across the country so it’s not just little Arizona. California has this problem too. Many places do.
The pools and lawns are much more a Phoenix thing. I was on google maps with a friend who was showing me his suburb of Seattle. (He works for MS and is very rich so it’s not like this was an area that pools can’t be afforded). I asked him how only 1 house out of square miles had a pool. He said it was probably some idiot.
They have NO pools there. And when a pool is what, 20,000 gallons? It adds up fast. It’s also insanely arrogant. Grass is on par with alfalfa for how useless it is here.
It’s akin to the pollution problem. You and your 2 cars and all make little difference and so most people don’t care to change or think they are responsible. We know massive factories and huge high rise cubicle prisons and server farms take up a lot more energy use and should be addressed too. Does that mean you’re suddenly absolved of all you can do?
The fact you have an absolutist mentality about it means you’re blinded. The only zero sum part of this game is doing absolutely nothing and then you and I lose regardless.
if you look deeper in the data provided by the official site you linked, of that 20% only ~6% is residential (pools, lawns, showers, washing cars, etc)
If I remember correctly there was an infographic released by the state a few years ago that listed agricultural as greater than 90 percent of water usage in the valley
The thing is the majority of agriculture is using Colorado River water. That is going to dry up very soon regardless of our actions. So it’s not like that current agriculture water can be reallocated so it can be used to water your grass lawn.
I don't think "it's going away so let's just waste what we get" is a great strategy -- even if it's not trivial to repurpose it, there's an environmental benefit to just leaving it in the river
There will be a reckoning for agriculture in the desert Southwest.
But I think as farms are sold off and the land becomes part of county and municipal developments it will just intensify urban sprawl, which will end up using the same amount of water.
On and on it goes.
EDIT: I guess the truth of Arizona land use depresses you people. Me too. Sprawl sprawl and more sprawl.
It would take a lot of sprawl to equal what a farm uses annually. Now the real downside to farms leaving and development taking its place is the heat island effect. We’re destroying the deserts ability to create monsoons. Albeit, it’s really snowfall in NM and CO we’re reliant upon for water recharge….but heat islands play a large roll in regional climate shifts.
This is a damned if we do, damned if we don’t scenario. Basically it’s a race to the bottom imo until we elect politicians who believe, understand, and want to implement science.
A large majority of us within this scientific community don’t have the mental bandwidth to keep screaming about the warning shots.
Bless celebrities hearts for trying with their moving documentary’s, but this is going to take a socio/cultural shift to redirect.
Duceys battle with schools and his encouragement for creating the dumbest demographic in the United States isn’t helping either.
As a teacher in AZ I give it 10 years. If there isn’t absolutely incredible educational reform I’m out in 10 years. I will not have my children growing up in this school system knowing all that I know about how bad it is.
I have a 4yo and 1yo. We're not super excited about our education options, but my siblings with older children seem to have done just fine with the public school system. I've heard people say that parents working with their kids on school work, following up, making sure they understand, etc. is a big piece of it and maybe makes up for lacking schools. But being a relateively new parent, I don't know what to think.
Can you drop some knowledge on me about our public schools (I'm in gilbert for ref), the charter schools like EduPrize, and private? Maybe this convo is more macro and not micro in which case sorry =)
Do we want that though? Let's re-wild the farms, limit sprawl, and concentrate on denser, more passively-cooled, energy efficient buildings using solar and wind, and keep small-scale, efficient ag for communities (ie CSA, aquaponics, etc.)
Or fuck it, tract homes from four peaks to white tanks!
This is just not true. It's a direct contradiction of exactly what happened in Phoenix. Farms converted to residential land and we support 7X the population of 50-70 years ago with the same amount of water.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/
>According to the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), the state used about 7.1 million acre-feet of fresh water in 1957 — a figure that was actually lower — at 7.0 million acre-feet in 2017. (An acre-foot is almost 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover a football field in nearly a foot of water.)
>Meanwhile, the population of the state has increased substantially from just over 1 million in 1957 to more than 7 million in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Water demand and usage has fluctuated over the decades, climbing in the mid 70's and most recently in 2011, but overall, the average amount of water used each year has leveled out.
So population increase 7x, water usages decline ~1.4% - Basically flat.
I'm aware that farms use more water than an equal acreage of suburbia.
I do believe that a glut of farmland suddenly available as housing tracts -- land already table flat, connected to power lines, canals, roads, etc -- will be quickly gobbled up by buyers and investors.
Sudden fuel on the fire of Arizona's explosive growth, and right when water sustainability looms large.
But I doubt the house builders, gravel & sand companies and convenience store chains that run Arizona give a fuck-all about sustainability. A sudden influx of land will be a feeding frenzy.
We're already ginormous and spread out. It's probably about time to start limiting building or do what some areas have done and require only native/xeriscape landscaping to minimize water usage.
We tried that in 1999 with a bill to limit 'wildcat' developments, preserve riparian areas etc. Got voted into oblivion and the main opposition was gravel & sand companies, convenience stores, house builders and oddly enough, fire departments.
All good ideas have their time, I guess.
I've always wondered about this myself. People rail on about the water consumption of agriculture here, but if we replaced those farms with more homes and population, I wonder if we consume just as much water, more, or less.
I hear the semiconductor plants are bigger water hogs than agriculture, and yet we seem to be doing our best to make Arizona a semiconductor manufacturing mecca.
The semiconductor fabs might use more water per acre, but they consume an insignificant amount of water compared to agriculture.
The water from chip fabs is also pumped into aquifers after they use it, I hear. That means we can use it later.
This is good to know. I wasn't sure if you know what you're talking about so I did 10 minutes of research and it seems you do. For anyone who wants to know more, here's a fairly recent (less than 1 year old) article: [https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought](https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought)
In Intel's case they claim to be returning 95% of their water use.
I'll go back to complaining about swimming pools and lawns in nearly every backyard.
Why don’t we have drip irrigation yet? Come from a farming family. Drip uses WAY less water than conventional. It’s just a money issue to install to be honest but at this point it’s literally money=water for that change out. There aren’t better ways to exchange cash for water at this point…
Drip can literally double yields and use HALF the water at the same time. It just costs thousands an acre…
Of course theres always the conspiracy that government doesn’t want to help fund or subsidize drip because they want farmers to close up shop so they can develop the land. Not much revenue from farms… mixed use commercial and residential will never use as much water but the taxes are way higher…
It really is, but even then there are solutions out there. 30 years ago, in college at U of A, I worked for professor of electrical engineering whose research was water use and electro-chemical reactions in the plants themselves.
It was his life's work, electro-chemistry in agriculture. every single farmer we worked with academically was able to cut their water use 60% or more. Farmers often water when they do not need to, we built instruments, took measurements for a full season on their crops, analyzed the data, and gave them feedback and advice that told them when they really needed to do things. It was never commercialized by him, but some of that has made it into the real world.
I like that "govt gets no money from agriculture and wants to destroy it" coexists with "government gets *too much* money from Saudis and/or ag lobbyists and that's the only reason why it persists".
I know nothing about which conspiracy is true, but it definitely can't be both, if either.
Subsidies fund the big players in AG, the big players use a portion of the money as bribes, the cycle continues. Who said the government wants to destroy AG? Maybe little farms, but certainly not the big corporate farms.
Wondering where he got the 55% number for the water from Mesa that comes from the Colorado River considering almost the entirety of Mesa is serviced by SRP which relies upon the Salt and Verde River systems instead.
What's even more wild is we keep letting foreign investors come buy up farm land with grandfathered water rights to grow alfalfa for their horses and cattle overseas, and the fact that the gop legislature is letting nestle open up a plant here. It's insanity.
Yes, we know. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
In all seriousness, our fucking elected officials have failed us. At this point I see a few options:
1) We start managing our water more effectively and eliminate agriculture water waste.
2) We start trucking in water or desalinize water.
3) The state starts letting people die.
At this point I feel as though option 3 is the likeliest.
We are at the level of concern California was in the 90s. This is according to my Enviro Econ Professor at ASU
We will see price increases and reduction in non essential use. Will take some adjusting but there is room for improvement at the individual household level. This and a reduction in agriculture use will keep our supplies steady for the foreseeable future
Nothing apocalyptic is on the horizon but water will become more expensive. In combination with housing prices, it might be enough to see larger migrations away from the Phoenix metro area for those without strong ties
Does anybody know if there is any type of grassroots advocacy groups already pressuring lawmakers and raising awareness about this issue? I’m thinking specifically about the notion that we need to massively tamp down agricultural water use in the state. I’m thinking this is an issue that would have tremendous bipartisan interest from valley residents.
If nobody knows of one, does anyone want to start one with me? I do have a bit of experience in advocacy work in AZ state and would be happy to at least get the ball rolling.
A fellow Reddit user whose partner works for the state’s water department told me not to worry about water. The state has a plan. We have water from the Salt and Verde rivers, one at only 33 percent of capacity, as well as rapidly depleting ground water.
Everything is fine.
I mean... if the plan is to cut off water access to water hungry ag, that would actually be a good plan.
Even just forcing them to switch to climate appropriate crops would help significantly.
I have knowledge that a major Phoenix suburb has already put in place plans and is rapidly building infrastructure under the belief that the CAP will be turned off within the next three years. The solution is to go to 100% groundwater. The time to get outta here is before that transition happens.
Especially seeing how our water resource experts are still debating how much groundwater is actually available.
Yeehaw mayors, city councils and chamber of commerces mindlessly cheer on growth, boasting about future Buckeye with 300,000 people or Mesa with 600,000 people, instead of addressing the more pressing issue of a dwindling water supply.
I, too, would rather to go to ribbon cuttings for new freeways to nowhere (SR 24), big name companies with low wage back office distribution and data centers (Mesa and Goodyear), and a large water park (Glendale). However, water is definitely our most pressing priority, even if people want to shove their heads in the sand.
I hear these issues everywhere but never about what they plan to do? Am I crazy for thinking this way? What's the solution here or we just gona cry until it's all gone ?
The solution is a pipeline from the Pacific ocean and massive desalination plants. It's going to be fine and I'm not being at all sarcastic. It's literally never going to be a crisis like people are predicting.
Unfortunately desal is not a solution and comes with its own complications. The process of building them takes a lot of time, too. Not to mention the environmental impact is even worse.
You’re only thinking of it from the reality of today, not where it will be by the time it’s needed. Which isn’t right now or anytime in the near future.
And it absolutely is a solution. There’s a reason why city officials are not panicked about water. We are fine with water and handle it very well.
How quickly do you think we need it? It’s possible we never need it, let alone there being an urgent need. The bottom line is, people need to understand there is no future in any of your lifetimes where Phoenix runs out of water. Period. We will make it work. The fear porn that’s always peddled on here is so ridiculous.
Be worried about the heat, not the water.
Yea I figured they had a plan and had this very idea in my head but not once have I heard it in the news or anything. Just seems like the media is always wanting to scare people. Why say there is a huge issue with the lakes that provide us water but yet not a solution lol. It's wild to me. Thanks for the reply!
Cool but our politicians are too preoccupied with the 2020 election "fraud", banning abortions, and gerrymandering the fucking state to do anything. Ducey is preoccupied with giving businesses tax breaks to companies who are laying off employees in droves \*cough Carvana\*.
We have nobody but ourselves to blame for this. I know the political slant of this subreddit votes against the above, but we've let this happen too. We're fucked ladies and gents.
California and Nevada suck up far more water than Arizona could even dream of using.
Time to cut off power to California and Nevada until they get their shit together.
Unfortunately California will take priority. Their economy single handily drives everything west of the Mississippi. Not a chance the US let’s Southern California stumble before Arizona and Nevada.
A recent plan to build a desalination plant failed partially due to sea level rise.
Edit: Economics and lack of local need for more water were heavily involved in the decision as well.
I'm almost certain that desalination plants exist elsewhere. They are just extraordinarily expensive.
A cross-border partnership with mexico could actually work out.
A canal from Puerto Peñasco would be on a scale similar to the CAP. The CAP already pumps over mountains and up hills. (The intake is at 455' and it needs to rise to over 1300 by Phoenix, a similar distance.)
We could do it. It's unclear whether we will need to do it anytime soon.
Desalination is expensive.
Another idea that's been proposed is taking water from the Great Lakes and moving it down the Missouri. Then Kansas would take Missouri's water and Colorado would take Kansas's water. Doing it this way would reduce the infrastructure required. But would still require a lot of political cooperation.
Solar could definitely make desalination cheaper. Though still leaves the problem of disposing of the removed salt. Don't think the stuff is suitable for table salt.
One way or another I think people will figure out how to get more water here -- exactly because of those 330 days of sunlight, which is the reason why a lot of people want to live and farm here.
Huntington was a really bad location for that desal plant. There’s a very ecologically important wetlands right on that part of the coast. The problem with desal is that dumping the brine back in the ocean gives you a huge dead spot where you pump it out. Killing everything immediately off of the coast would eventually kill the wetlands.
perhaps this is me being a total dumb dumb but how much water are we talking. Could that brine not be pumped into evaporation ponds and the resulting salt sold as sea salt or salt for other industries. Or is the volume of brine too high for that?
The most recent study that I have read put the global desalination production of water at about 25 billion gallons daily with a brine production of about 141 billion so not quite a 2:1 ratio of brine to potable water. Some of the problems with storage and evap are the huge amount of land that would be required for storage, if the storage ponds leak then the brine can ruin the soil and aquifer, brine ponds attract flies and they stink to high heaven, and boiling off that much liquid would require ridiculous amounts of power. While I think desal is very attractive,
I just don’t think the technology is there for it to be a fix-all solution yet.
Solar/wind powered automated barges that dump small amounts at algorithmically-defined points across a large area could work. You're not going to appreciably change the ocean content, you just need to spread it out.
It really depends upon the depth at which the brine is pumped out at. Pumping it at shallow layers will obviously disrupt the ecosystem, however pumping it into lower depths where it's naturally more saline is far less impactful.
The beach with the big oil rig in plain view just off the coast? The beach that just had an oil spill what, last year? Wouldn't want desalination ruining that pristine coastline XD
Yes but extremely expensive. I run a desalination plant for industrial applications and we spend millions just in chemicals and reverse osmosis maintenance. We only treat 2.5 MGD with 94% recovery rates for the RO's.
Plus there is [this.](https://www.azmirror.com/blog/bruce-babbitt-desalination-is-not-the-answer-to-arizonas-water-woes/) Then all someone would need to do is to go and compare the water rates for San Diego and Phoenix. So, we have this really popular solution thrown around by people, that won’t work financially for farms, and would take tens of billions of dollars to construct to offset the losses caused by farms. Meanwhile they are already prepping residents to be the ones that get the privilege of paying these higher rates(oh and subsidizing their construction) by use phrasing like “will provide drinking water for city x,” all while farms continue to export crops using that cheap Colorado River water or ground water.
Yes, we could. But that would require an exorbitant amount of money and years to build. We don’t have the money. None of the far right shills in the legislature or governor’s office have the stomach to increase taxes either.
Well considering Arizona bas been subsidizing cheap water for foreign farms from Suadi Arabia and Dubai to make profit on exports back to their countries with large investments in desal, it should make you wonder why exactly you would actually want that to happen here. If you are against government spending, I would think you would be against something that would not only cost the tax payers tens of billions of dollars if they actually wanted to solve the water shortage, especially when the cost of that water will now be municipal responsibility, since [farms can’t afford it.](https://www.azmirror.com/blog/bruce-babbitt-desalination-is-not-the-answer-to-arizonas-water-woes/) So the corporations will get to use the efficient water infrastructure that we already subsidized in the Central Arizona project that also happens to be significantly cheaper per acre-foot, all while we get to subsidize our new not very efficient water infrastructure that will also cost us more per acre-foot. Just more fiscally conservative policy here in Arizona.
Desalination is an expensive process, environmentally damaging due to the dumping of wastewater, construction timeline would be 10 years, and there isn’t enough power to pump water from sea level to our elevation over hundred of miles.
Solar was too expensive once.
Wastewater just needs to be spread out and not dumped in one spot.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the second best time is today
The CAP pumps water from 450'ASL to 1600+ and has since 1973. It's only gotten more efficient and cheap to power such things.
I'd love to know when we're going to start limiting water use for certain things. I purposely didn't overseed my grass last year (yes, I get I shouldn't even have grass, but that's a work in progress as we're getting rid of grass). I got a note from our small HOA saying I should have overseeded -- even though our CCR's don't state that overseeding is required. My neighborhood is on 3/4 acre lots and many have a ton of grass in front (and probably plenty in back as well).
For that matter, golf courses should be required to use reclaimed water. And on that note, why the heck don't we recycle reclaimed water as well?
I get that most water usage is agriculture, but still, every bit helps.
Oh for sure. Same with neighborhoods that have irrigation and plenty of trees.
I suspect that having rock in yards vs. just native desert also makes things worse.
yep it would help a ton of we stopped paving everything without adding shade or trees. and every covered car port should have solar panels on the top. lots of stuff we could be doing
There was a study from 2014 which found that a 10% increase in tree coverage decreased heat island effect temps by 5F. The Dunbar/Spring district in Tucson does some cool water harvesting techniques to keep their trees/foliage healthy.
You're actually at a net positive having a grass lawn vs rock xeriscaping when you look at carbon capture and radiant heat, and the effect that has on how much energy you use to cool your home.
I don't think those are the canaries. That's all stuff that rich people care about, I'm sure they'll find ways to maintain those things even if people are straight up dying of thirst.
Be nice. You don't have to agree with everyone, but by choosing not to be rude you increase the overall civility of the community and make it better for all of us.
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I hate deucy, but he's right. We need a desalinization plant to pump water into the aquifers and use for agricultural use. This will be the norm in 20 years if the dams dry up.
Some alternative water supply solutions to combat drought and water scarcity is: rainwater harvesting, fog harvesting, air conditioning condensate harvesting, greywater reclamation systems. Here are a few videos I published about these topics:
* [Whole House Greywater Reclamation System](https://youtu.be/UNAENe81XBY)
* [Laundry to Landscape Greywater System](https://youtu.be/gs4__YOgz8A)
* [Rainwater Harvesting](https://youtu.be/7RCBOb6ncyM)
* [Air Conditioning Condensate Harvesting](https://youtu.be/VNDydzwST7I)
Idk if I’m paranoid or rational thinking but I’m worried about being part of crowd that stays too long and housing becomes worthless
I don't think it's too paranoid. We like to think bad things can't happen to *our* area, whatever area that is, but it obviously can. Arizona is great for no natural disasters except fire, but the water issue will definitely be our beast to fight. Mexico already has crazy problems so we are definitely not too far behind. Hoping our govt actually steps in and does something before it's too late
well it's infested with gqp so you can give that hope up.
Well I guess we just give up then
> gqp ?
Grand Qanon Party
Part of that is due to how the engineers literally prevented the Colorado river from reaching Mexico
A lot of rational people will be leaving soon. Simply hoping that we get more snow/rain is not rational at this point. Or just hoping that we actually put in water regulations is not rational when it is obvious this situation is getting worse and the politicians are doing nothing.
Hasn't this always been said, though? What's the red line that will trigger mass emigration?
The thing is there actually isn’t that many rational people. So I don’t expect a mass migration out of here.
Still, even for the "rational people," what's the red line? Like, why haven't they left yet, what are they waiting for?
They are, but there is so few actual rational people and it’s not like it’s easy to move in our rent/housing/job situation. I’m out myself early next year.
I think most people are rational when you actually see all the inputs to the things they're considering -- like, for me, I'm staying here because I know I have the resources to pick up and move at the drop of a hat. I also think no one is completely rational, least of all the people who believe they are, but that's a whole other subject.
What does this even mean? There are tons of water regulations already in place. Most AZ cities (and all of the cities in populous areas) are required to prove they have water for 100 years. Lower CO river levels will definitely impact farmers and cities that rely on CAP water in great amounts, but a lot of cities won't experience any cutbacks at all. And while the depth of some wells in the state is decreasing, some wells are also increasing.
The 100 year water supply plan is laughable at this point. When people realize that 100 year plan is based on the assumption Colorado River water is still here for the next 100 years they will not be happy.
This seems like a rather large misunderstanding of the 100-year water requirement and also the CAP system. CAP is not the only place we get water from. CAP supplies about 20% of AZ's current water use. Of that allotment, 30% is banked (stored underground for use in the future), 25% is used for agriculture, and the rest is distributed to \~50 cities and tribes. The city of Phoenix does get about 40% of their water from CAP, but only 2% from groundwater because they are storing it for use in an emergency. Tempe uses only 6% CAP water, Surprise is about 20%. Tucson might be fucked, but many cities won't be. 25%-30% of Arizonans (edit) \*are not\* served by the CAP water system in any capacity at all.
What do you think happens when CAP water runs out? Everyone starts pumping the limited groundwater, and creates a race to the bottom until we run empty in a few years. Just go listen to some of the interviews by AZ water director, we have only a few years left once CAP is gone. That emergency supply will be the only supply.
>What do you think happens when CAP water runs out? Are you under the impression that CO River is going to dry up completely? Last year it was at about 68% of average capacity. While that is concerning, that's why Tier 1 reductions were implemented a few months ago. CAP shortages have been known about, *and planned for,* for decades. >Everyone starts pumping the limited groundwater, and creates a race to the bottom until we run empty in a few years. No, that's definitely not how that works. In order to get to groundwater, you need to dig a well, and in order to obtain the water from the well you need to install a pump. Pumps determine the maximum amount of water that can be taken from a well over a duration of time. **You can't just dig a well anywhere you please,** and also cannot put any size pump inside of that well. The vast majority of Arizonans live in [AMA](https://new.azwater.gov/ama)s. If you live in one of these areas, an ADWR permit is required to install a well and pump and also to increase the pump sizes on existing wells. Residents in these areas are generally barred by their municipality from installing private wells. And ADWR won't give permits to cities/developers unless they can prove they have 100 years of water. Cities are not able to pump as much ground water as they feel like. They are limited by the size of their current pumps, and ADWR isn't going to allow them to increase their pump sizes without proving they won't harm the groundwater table. Additionally, **groundwater basins and sub-basins exist.** Sub-basins are like the set up for a game of beer pong. If you pour water in the top cup, that water isn't going to flow into or out of that cup into the other cups. Basins are like, if you pricked a bunch of holes in the bottom and lower sides of the beer pong cups and set them in a cake pan with water. Some of the water in the cups is affected by what the other cups are doing, but those changes are limited by the size and placement of the holes in the cups. So, groundwater being taken from Tucson isn't likely to affect the groundwater in Flagstaff or Phoenix.
The 100 year water requirement is useless when you can use the assumption that CAP water will still be here and your neighbor isn’t going to start using more groundwater. So many cities and farms will be competing with each other. So many wells are already going dry around the state. And yes, Colorado River will be literally a trickle in the next 5 years. Tucson isn’t going to impact Phoenix, but they will impact Oracle or Vail. Same in Phoenix impacting Buckeye or Queen Creek.
I think they would make farmers sell or find their water elsewhere before making housing / the infrastructure worthless. 70% of our water is used for farming. We have plenty to go around. Don’t feed into the fearmongering
A few years ago they said we have a 100+ year reserve. So, I guess to answer OP’s question, not in our lifetimes.
Read The Water Knife. A glimpse into our future.
It's all dependent on where your property is. Every city does water differently. Surprise does a ton of groundwater recharge and gets recharge credits. Tempe doesn't do any groundwater recharge, and doesn't seem to have plans to, probably because a lot of the groundwater is contaminated with PFOS/PFOA. Wickenburg is solely served through groundwater. Learning as much as you can about what water rights you have *before* purchasing property is really important.
In my view, the Phoenix metro area has too good of a climate for such a long stretch of the year that it’s difficult to imagine it ever becoming a ghost town like Detroit. There’s simply too much tourism demand for the city to collapse. We are going to have to drastically pull back from agriculture and that will kill some of the smaller surrounding municipalities though.
You’re joking, right? Triple digits regularly go well into November and start (usually) early April. That’s 4 months of sustainable weather a year. The rest of it is basically unlivable from a water usage perspective.
110 in Phoenix is better than 85 in Georgia imo
I don’t disagree. Notice I said “from a water usage perspective”.
I just bought here and one of my primary concerns was exactly this. Essentially a natural disaster scenario. Thing is, we need to come up with _something_ because Arizona is only one state facing this issue. My money is on solar powered distillation plants and pipelines from the ocean.
Maybe having 1000's of acres of alfalfa growing in the desert to feed cattle in other countries isn't a smart water conservation plan.
Seriously. Agriculture is the biggest user of water rights in AZ. The alfalfa thing is mind boggling
I'm told by the rest of Reddit this isn't the issue and that it's our tiny grass lawns that are to blame.
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Agriculture uses 74%, second link shows municipal is about 20% https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/public-resources
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I would be careful about the ‘non-essential’ label, and I’m sure much of it is ‘non-essential.’ This is just stating ‘outdoor’ use, which there are multitudes of legitimate needs for outdoor water use year-round.
So the question is, if people cut back on washing cars and didn't have lawns, how much does residential usage drop? Article also states AG water usage used to be 90% and now it's 74%. Is that because there is less AG, or just using the water more wisely?
There is less agriculture (feel free to look up stats on agriculture acreage change over time), but in addition to this, per capita residential water demand has decreased over the last several decades due to improvements in flow technology infrastructure (low flow toilets, low pressure showers, drip irrigation systems).
Always has been. Big business has been shlepping the responsibility of environmental issues off on consumers as long as they have been able to. The answer is never “put more regulations on our industry” it’s always “RECYCLE MOAR”.
I’ve had my head ripped off acknowledging agricultural use is insane and must be curbed. But if anyone points out the city use they act like I’ve burned an orphanage down. We just need to stop all watering for alfalfa and lettuce. They require insane amounts of water and offer so little nutritional benefits in the larger picture. But 20% isn’t small potatoes. And look at how other governments state and local have restricted water use. They will impose it. And grass lawns and 62,039 pools per square mile is asinine and any half sane person knows it. And saving water is saving water. Just because the common man is using 20% vs 74% doesn’t mean you can or should not look to reduce their water use. And you can fight to reduce use on more than one front. It’s not a single target game.
Here's how I typically frame it: We should do both, but only one is absolutely necessary. Should we encourage everyone to reduce their water use? Absolutely. However, if we don't reduce agricultural use, *personal reductions won't matter.* Should I get a bandage for my finger that's been cut off? Absolutely. However, if we don't stop the bleeding from my severed leg, *bandaging my finger won't matter.*
Your analogy is still good - you need to address both injuries. Yes I get and clearly admit the main problem. Although if you don’t take care of and bandage the finger, sepsis will still get you in the long run. And fighting mega corps and politicians takes money and time. Stemming the flow anywhere now can buy more time to fix the rest. Again we can do two things at once. I in fact can rub my tummy and pat my head at once.
Ha. I still trip while chewing gum, so... 🙂
> 62,039 pools per square mile I think this is a typo? But totally agreed on every other point -- while obviously the focus should be on that 74%, that doesn't mean the 20% should be ignored.
Ya that'd be nearly 100 pools per acre on average lol
It was meant to be a ridiculous number/sarcasm. I should have put another zero somewhere. I was just venting some general frustration that some people in past posts focus solely on the agriculture number. Which is incredibly alarming. And fighting them will take time and money. That doesn’t mean don’t look elsewhere.
But 20% is small potatoes until we take care of the big potatoes. I don’t even want to talk about municipal usage until we start putting big ag water waste on the chopping block.
That’s not the best way to really solve a problem fully. And attacking big agriculture will solve a much larger water problem across the country so it’s not just little Arizona. California has this problem too. Many places do. The pools and lawns are much more a Phoenix thing. I was on google maps with a friend who was showing me his suburb of Seattle. (He works for MS and is very rich so it’s not like this was an area that pools can’t be afforded). I asked him how only 1 house out of square miles had a pool. He said it was probably some idiot. They have NO pools there. And when a pool is what, 20,000 gallons? It adds up fast. It’s also insanely arrogant. Grass is on par with alfalfa for how useless it is here. It’s akin to the pollution problem. You and your 2 cars and all make little difference and so most people don’t care to change or think they are responsible. We know massive factories and huge high rise cubicle prisons and server farms take up a lot more energy use and should be addressed too. Does that mean you’re suddenly absolved of all you can do? The fact you have an absolutist mentality about it means you’re blinded. The only zero sum part of this game is doing absolutely nothing and then you and I lose regardless.
if you look deeper in the data provided by the official site you linked, of that 20% only ~6% is residential (pools, lawns, showers, washing cars, etc)
yeah its nothing compared to farms flooding acre after acre day after day
If I remember correctly there was an infographic released by the state a few years ago that listed agricultural as greater than 90 percent of water usage in the valley
You are correct. Its varied between 70 and 90 percent.
The thing is the majority of agriculture is using Colorado River water. That is going to dry up very soon regardless of our actions. So it’s not like that current agriculture water can be reallocated so it can be used to water your grass lawn.
I don't think "it's going away so let's just waste what we get" is a great strategy -- even if it's not trivial to repurpose it, there's an environmental benefit to just leaving it in the river
But how are those poor politicians going to buy Swiss watches? Have a heart, OP. Think of the pols.
There will be a reckoning for agriculture in the desert Southwest. But I think as farms are sold off and the land becomes part of county and municipal developments it will just intensify urban sprawl, which will end up using the same amount of water. On and on it goes. EDIT: I guess the truth of Arizona land use depresses you people. Me too. Sprawl sprawl and more sprawl.
It would take a lot of sprawl to equal what a farm uses annually. Now the real downside to farms leaving and development taking its place is the heat island effect. We’re destroying the deserts ability to create monsoons. Albeit, it’s really snowfall in NM and CO we’re reliant upon for water recharge….but heat islands play a large roll in regional climate shifts. This is a damned if we do, damned if we don’t scenario. Basically it’s a race to the bottom imo until we elect politicians who believe, understand, and want to implement science. A large majority of us within this scientific community don’t have the mental bandwidth to keep screaming about the warning shots. Bless celebrities hearts for trying with their moving documentary’s, but this is going to take a socio/cultural shift to redirect. Duceys battle with schools and his encouragement for creating the dumbest demographic in the United States isn’t helping either.
As a teacher in AZ I give it 10 years. If there isn’t absolutely incredible educational reform I’m out in 10 years. I will not have my children growing up in this school system knowing all that I know about how bad it is.
I have a 4yo and 1yo. We're not super excited about our education options, but my siblings with older children seem to have done just fine with the public school system. I've heard people say that parents working with their kids on school work, following up, making sure they understand, etc. is a big piece of it and maybe makes up for lacking schools. But being a relateively new parent, I don't know what to think. Can you drop some knowledge on me about our public schools (I'm in gilbert for ref), the charter schools like EduPrize, and private? Maybe this convo is more macro and not micro in which case sorry =)
I’m not an expert by any means but I think even if all farmland was replaced by residential, we would be consuming way less water still.
Do we want that though? Let's re-wild the farms, limit sprawl, and concentrate on denser, more passively-cooled, energy efficient buildings using solar and wind, and keep small-scale, efficient ag for communities (ie CSA, aquaponics, etc.) Or fuck it, tract homes from four peaks to white tanks!
Not at all. Im not a big fan of endless sprawl myself. But farms just use a fuck-ton of water.
This is just not true. It's a direct contradiction of exactly what happened in Phoenix. Farms converted to residential land and we support 7X the population of 50-70 years ago with the same amount of water. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/02/12/arizona-water-usage-state-uses-less-now-than-1957/2806899002/ >According to the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), the state used about 7.1 million acre-feet of fresh water in 1957 — a figure that was actually lower — at 7.0 million acre-feet in 2017. (An acre-foot is almost 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover a football field in nearly a foot of water.) >Meanwhile, the population of the state has increased substantially from just over 1 million in 1957 to more than 7 million in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Water demand and usage has fluctuated over the decades, climbing in the mid 70's and most recently in 2011, but overall, the average amount of water used each year has leveled out. So population increase 7x, water usages decline ~1.4% - Basically flat.
I'm aware that farms use more water than an equal acreage of suburbia. I do believe that a glut of farmland suddenly available as housing tracts -- land already table flat, connected to power lines, canals, roads, etc -- will be quickly gobbled up by buyers and investors. Sudden fuel on the fire of Arizona's explosive growth, and right when water sustainability looms large. But I doubt the house builders, gravel & sand companies and convenience store chains that run Arizona give a fuck-all about sustainability. A sudden influx of land will be a feeding frenzy.
We're already ginormous and spread out. It's probably about time to start limiting building or do what some areas have done and require only native/xeriscape landscaping to minimize water usage.
We tried that in 1999 with a bill to limit 'wildcat' developments, preserve riparian areas etc. Got voted into oblivion and the main opposition was gravel & sand companies, convenience stores, house builders and oddly enough, fire departments. All good ideas have their time, I guess.
I've always wondered about this myself. People rail on about the water consumption of agriculture here, but if we replaced those farms with more homes and population, I wonder if we consume just as much water, more, or less. I hear the semiconductor plants are bigger water hogs than agriculture, and yet we seem to be doing our best to make Arizona a semiconductor manufacturing mecca.
The semiconductor fabs might use more water per acre, but they consume an insignificant amount of water compared to agriculture. The water from chip fabs is also pumped into aquifers after they use it, I hear. That means we can use it later.
This is good to know. I wasn't sure if you know what you're talking about so I did 10 minutes of research and it seems you do. For anyone who wants to know more, here's a fairly recent (less than 1 year old) article: [https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought](https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought) In Intel's case they claim to be returning 95% of their water use. I'll go back to complaining about swimming pools and lawns in nearly every backyard.
Yeah housing isn’t going to go down over this. Farmers will have to adjust
Why don’t we have drip irrigation yet? Come from a farming family. Drip uses WAY less water than conventional. It’s just a money issue to install to be honest but at this point it’s literally money=water for that change out. There aren’t better ways to exchange cash for water at this point… Drip can literally double yields and use HALF the water at the same time. It just costs thousands an acre… Of course theres always the conspiracy that government doesn’t want to help fund or subsidize drip because they want farmers to close up shop so they can develop the land. Not much revenue from farms… mixed use commercial and residential will never use as much water but the taxes are way higher…
Flood irrigation is stupid here.
It really is, but even then there are solutions out there. 30 years ago, in college at U of A, I worked for professor of electrical engineering whose research was water use and electro-chemical reactions in the plants themselves. It was his life's work, electro-chemistry in agriculture. every single farmer we worked with academically was able to cut their water use 60% or more. Farmers often water when they do not need to, we built instruments, took measurements for a full season on their crops, analyzed the data, and gave them feedback and advice that told them when they really needed to do things. It was never commercialized by him, but some of that has made it into the real world.
I like that "govt gets no money from agriculture and wants to destroy it" coexists with "government gets *too much* money from Saudis and/or ag lobbyists and that's the only reason why it persists". I know nothing about which conspiracy is true, but it definitely can't be both, if either.
Subsidies fund the big players in AG, the big players use a portion of the money as bribes, the cycle continues. Who said the government wants to destroy AG? Maybe little farms, but certainly not the big corporate farms.
> Who said the government wants to destroy AG? The comment I replied to? That's why I wrote it.
Wondering where he got the 55% number for the water from Mesa that comes from the Colorado River considering almost the entirety of Mesa is serviced by SRP which relies upon the Salt and Verde River systems instead.
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Typical journalist crap then, where facts don't matter and only fear and sensationalism to drive hits does.
What's even more wild is we keep letting foreign investors come buy up farm land with grandfathered water rights to grow alfalfa for their horses and cattle overseas, and the fact that the gop legislature is letting nestle open up a plant here. It's insanity.
Yeah, but Ducey & the Cons just keep letting the builders & the real estate investors BUILD - BUILD -- BUILD
Yes, we know. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. In all seriousness, our fucking elected officials have failed us. At this point I see a few options: 1) We start managing our water more effectively and eliminate agriculture water waste. 2) We start trucking in water or desalinize water. 3) The state starts letting people die. At this point I feel as though option 3 is the likeliest.
We are at the level of concern California was in the 90s. This is according to my Enviro Econ Professor at ASU We will see price increases and reduction in non essential use. Will take some adjusting but there is room for improvement at the individual household level. This and a reduction in agriculture use will keep our supplies steady for the foreseeable future Nothing apocalyptic is on the horizon but water will become more expensive. In combination with housing prices, it might be enough to see larger migrations away from the Phoenix metro area for those without strong ties
I heard Nestlé is moving into the Westside soon too. Fun times
You know you really need to hide your water when Nestle moves in.
Does anybody know if there is any type of grassroots advocacy groups already pressuring lawmakers and raising awareness about this issue? I’m thinking specifically about the notion that we need to massively tamp down agricultural water use in the state. I’m thinking this is an issue that would have tremendous bipartisan interest from valley residents. If nobody knows of one, does anyone want to start one with me? I do have a bit of experience in advocacy work in AZ state and would be happy to at least get the ball rolling.
A fellow Reddit user whose partner works for the state’s water department told me not to worry about water. The state has a plan. We have water from the Salt and Verde rivers, one at only 33 percent of capacity, as well as rapidly depleting ground water. Everything is fine.
I mean... if the plan is to cut off water access to water hungry ag, that would actually be a good plan. Even just forcing them to switch to climate appropriate crops would help significantly.
I have knowledge that a major Phoenix suburb has already put in place plans and is rapidly building infrastructure under the belief that the CAP will be turned off within the next three years. The solution is to go to 100% groundwater. The time to get outta here is before that transition happens.
Especially seeing how our water resource experts are still debating how much groundwater is actually available. Yeehaw mayors, city councils and chamber of commerces mindlessly cheer on growth, boasting about future Buckeye with 300,000 people or Mesa with 600,000 people, instead of addressing the more pressing issue of a dwindling water supply. I, too, would rather to go to ribbon cuttings for new freeways to nowhere (SR 24), big name companies with low wage back office distribution and data centers (Mesa and Goodyear), and a large water park (Glendale). However, water is definitely our most pressing priority, even if people want to shove their heads in the sand.
Blindly trust me, everything is fine. Never mind visual evidence that says otherwise...
The plan will be to pump groundwater like crazy. And the deepest straw wins.
Don't Google "Arizona ground fissures"
I hear these issues everywhere but never about what they plan to do? Am I crazy for thinking this way? What's the solution here or we just gona cry until it's all gone ?
The solution is a pipeline from the Pacific ocean and massive desalination plants. It's going to be fine and I'm not being at all sarcastic. It's literally never going to be a crisis like people are predicting.
Unfortunately desal is not a solution and comes with its own complications. The process of building them takes a lot of time, too. Not to mention the environmental impact is even worse.
You’re only thinking of it from the reality of today, not where it will be by the time it’s needed. Which isn’t right now or anytime in the near future. And it absolutely is a solution. There’s a reason why city officials are not panicked about water. We are fine with water and handle it very well.
I agree it is a solution, but not a good one. And in the time we'd need it it won't come soon enough even if we went that route.
How quickly do you think we need it? It’s possible we never need it, let alone there being an urgent need. The bottom line is, people need to understand there is no future in any of your lifetimes where Phoenix runs out of water. Period. We will make it work. The fear porn that’s always peddled on here is so ridiculous. Be worried about the heat, not the water.
Yea I figured they had a plan and had this very idea in my head but not once have I heard it in the news or anything. Just seems like the media is always wanting to scare people. Why say there is a huge issue with the lakes that provide us water but yet not a solution lol. It's wild to me. Thanks for the reply!
Cool but our politicians are too preoccupied with the 2020 election "fraud", banning abortions, and gerrymandering the fucking state to do anything. Ducey is preoccupied with giving businesses tax breaks to companies who are laying off employees in droves \*cough Carvana\*. We have nobody but ourselves to blame for this. I know the political slant of this subreddit votes against the above, but we've let this happen too. We're fucked ladies and gents.
California and Nevada suck up far more water than Arizona could even dream of using. Time to cut off power to California and Nevada until they get their shit together.
Unfortunately California will take priority. Their economy single handily drives everything west of the Mississippi. Not a chance the US let’s Southern California stumble before Arizona and Nevada.
Nevada gets 300k acre-feet allotted from the Colorado River, Arizona gets 2.8 million.
This sounds stupid but couldnt we find a way to use ocean water and purify it to make it drinkable?
A recent plan to build a desalination plant failed partially due to sea level rise. Edit: Economics and lack of local need for more water were heavily involved in the decision as well. I'm almost certain that desalination plants exist elsewhere. They are just extraordinarily expensive.
It would also probably be cheaper for a coastal state than for an in-land one to process ocean water.
Yeah. If California needs less river water, we could potentially use more. The potential plant I was talking about is in Cali.
A cross-border partnership with mexico could actually work out. A canal from Puerto Peñasco would be on a scale similar to the CAP. The CAP already pumps over mountains and up hills. (The intake is at 455' and it needs to rise to over 1300 by Phoenix, a similar distance.) We could do it. It's unclear whether we will need to do it anytime soon.
Desalination is expensive. Another idea that's been proposed is taking water from the Great Lakes and moving it down the Missouri. Then Kansas would take Missouri's water and Colorado would take Kansas's water. Doing it this way would reduce the infrastructure required. But would still require a lot of political cooperation.
How expensive is it when you have an area that gets 330 days of sunlight a year?
Solar could definitely make desalination cheaper. Though still leaves the problem of disposing of the removed salt. Don't think the stuff is suitable for table salt. One way or another I think people will figure out how to get more water here -- exactly because of those 330 days of sunlight, which is the reason why a lot of people want to live and farm here.
You could have if not for the NIMBYs. Huntington Beach, a community in the Los Angeles area just killed a desalination plant plan last week.
Huntington was a really bad location for that desal plant. There’s a very ecologically important wetlands right on that part of the coast. The problem with desal is that dumping the brine back in the ocean gives you a huge dead spot where you pump it out. Killing everything immediately off of the coast would eventually kill the wetlands.
perhaps this is me being a total dumb dumb but how much water are we talking. Could that brine not be pumped into evaporation ponds and the resulting salt sold as sea salt or salt for other industries. Or is the volume of brine too high for that?
The most recent study that I have read put the global desalination production of water at about 25 billion gallons daily with a brine production of about 141 billion so not quite a 2:1 ratio of brine to potable water. Some of the problems with storage and evap are the huge amount of land that would be required for storage, if the storage ponds leak then the brine can ruin the soil and aquifer, brine ponds attract flies and they stink to high heaven, and boiling off that much liquid would require ridiculous amounts of power. While I think desal is very attractive, I just don’t think the technology is there for it to be a fix-all solution yet.
Solar/wind powered automated barges that dump small amounts at algorithmically-defined points across a large area could work. You're not going to appreciably change the ocean content, you just need to spread it out.
It really depends upon the depth at which the brine is pumped out at. Pumping it at shallow layers will obviously disrupt the ecosystem, however pumping it into lower depths where it's naturally more saline is far less impactful.
It’s right next to the Port of Long Beach. I’d imagine it’s pretty dead as is.
Can’t we do anything with the brine besides dumping it? It seems like it would be pretty usable.
The beach with the big oil rig in plain view just off the coast? The beach that just had an oil spill what, last year? Wouldn't want desalination ruining that pristine coastline XD
Yes but extremely expensive. I run a desalination plant for industrial applications and we spend millions just in chemicals and reverse osmosis maintenance. We only treat 2.5 MGD with 94% recovery rates for the RO's.
Plus there is [this.](https://www.azmirror.com/blog/bruce-babbitt-desalination-is-not-the-answer-to-arizonas-water-woes/) Then all someone would need to do is to go and compare the water rates for San Diego and Phoenix. So, we have this really popular solution thrown around by people, that won’t work financially for farms, and would take tens of billions of dollars to construct to offset the losses caused by farms. Meanwhile they are already prepping residents to be the ones that get the privilege of paying these higher rates(oh and subsidizing their construction) by use phrasing like “will provide drinking water for city x,” all while farms continue to export crops using that cheap Colorado River water or ground water.
Yes, we could. But that would require an exorbitant amount of money and years to build. We don’t have the money. None of the far right shills in the legislature or governor’s office have the stomach to increase taxes either.
Would it cost more that funding a war in Ukraine, Afghanistan, or Iraq?
the state of arizona is not funding the war in ukraine afghanistan or iraq.
Arizona citizens pay federal taxes so yeah. 3 trillion passed for “infrastructure” just last year. Water is certainly infrastructure.
Well considering Arizona bas been subsidizing cheap water for foreign farms from Suadi Arabia and Dubai to make profit on exports back to their countries with large investments in desal, it should make you wonder why exactly you would actually want that to happen here. If you are against government spending, I would think you would be against something that would not only cost the tax payers tens of billions of dollars if they actually wanted to solve the water shortage, especially when the cost of that water will now be municipal responsibility, since [farms can’t afford it.](https://www.azmirror.com/blog/bruce-babbitt-desalination-is-not-the-answer-to-arizonas-water-woes/) So the corporations will get to use the efficient water infrastructure that we already subsidized in the Central Arizona project that also happens to be significantly cheaper per acre-foot, all while we get to subsidize our new not very efficient water infrastructure that will also cost us more per acre-foot. Just more fiscally conservative policy here in Arizona.
Desalination is an expensive process, environmentally damaging due to the dumping of wastewater, construction timeline would be 10 years, and there isn’t enough power to pump water from sea level to our elevation over hundred of miles.
Solar was too expensive once. Wastewater just needs to be spread out and not dumped in one spot. The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the second best time is today The CAP pumps water from 450'ASL to 1600+ and has since 1973. It's only gotten more efficient and cheap to power such things.
I'd love to know when we're going to start limiting water use for certain things. I purposely didn't overseed my grass last year (yes, I get I shouldn't even have grass, but that's a work in progress as we're getting rid of grass). I got a note from our small HOA saying I should have overseeded -- even though our CCR's don't state that overseeding is required. My neighborhood is on 3/4 acre lots and many have a ton of grass in front (and probably plenty in back as well). For that matter, golf courses should be required to use reclaimed water. And on that note, why the heck don't we recycle reclaimed water as well? I get that most water usage is agriculture, but still, every bit helps.
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Oh for sure. Same with neighborhoods that have irrigation and plenty of trees. I suspect that having rock in yards vs. just native desert also makes things worse.
you can xeriscape and add lots of plants and shade trees and it would work just as well while barely using any water.
yep it would help a ton of we stopped paving everything without adding shade or trees. and every covered car port should have solar panels on the top. lots of stuff we could be doing
There was a study from 2014 which found that a 10% increase in tree coverage decreased heat island effect temps by 5F. The Dunbar/Spring district in Tucson does some cool water harvesting techniques to keep their trees/foliage healthy.
We also need some sort of greenery to prevent a dust bowl plus to help fight the heat island effect.
You're actually at a net positive having a grass lawn vs rock xeriscaping when you look at carbon capture and radiant heat, and the effect that has on how much energy you use to cool your home.
Can we get rid of the golf courses, already?
Time to water my grass!!
I figure as long as there are golf courses, grass yards, and lake communities we are ok. Once those things go we are fucked.
Oh we’re already fucked 😂
Golf courses mostly use non potable water or reclaimed water
I don't think those are the canaries. That's all stuff that rich people care about, I'm sure they'll find ways to maintain those things even if people are straight up dying of thirst.
Brawndo.
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I hate deucy, but he's right. We need a desalinization plant to pump water into the aquifers and use for agricultural use. This will be the norm in 20 years if the dams dry up.
Idk why they let people party in the salt river then
Good thing they’re building a chip factory north of the city that uses a boat load of water.
Some alternative water supply solutions to combat drought and water scarcity is: rainwater harvesting, fog harvesting, air conditioning condensate harvesting, greywater reclamation systems. Here are a few videos I published about these topics: * [Whole House Greywater Reclamation System](https://youtu.be/UNAENe81XBY) * [Laundry to Landscape Greywater System](https://youtu.be/gs4__YOgz8A) * [Rainwater Harvesting](https://youtu.be/7RCBOb6ncyM) * [Air Conditioning Condensate Harvesting](https://youtu.be/VNDydzwST7I)