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The bulk of our water usage does _not_ come from the Colorado River. 36% does. The bulk, 64% of our water (2018), comes from our groundwater aquifers and in-st

• klenwell 7y ago
  Did you read the article? It was impressively reported and provided a comprehensive account of the problem from a white working class family that relocated to the area and had their well run dry to the backroom discussions in the Arizona legislature that will ultimately dictate the future of industry and environment. You're right that the Colorado River is irrelevant to the issue under discussion here. But the article clearly shows that the aquifers are as big a crisis: In the late 1990s, during the first few years of what would eventually turn out to be a 19-year-and-counting Arizona drought, only about 15,000 acre-feet of water were estimated to have percolated into the aquifer each year, while 100,000 were being pumped out; as the valley continued to warm throughout the 2000s and 2010s, with rainfall and snowmelt plummeting, estimates for recharge went unrecorded, as annual pumping soared to 200,000 acre feet. Once, it had been possible for ranchers to develop natural springs into watering holes using only a shovel. Now, after watching water levels drop 100 to 300 feet in 35 years, some farmers wondered how long they could go on... In 2017 alone, one farm pumped 22 billion gallons, nearly double the volume of bottled water sold in the United States annually. Immigrant laborers and immigration are largely a non sequitur. They're cannon fodder in this battle and scarcely mentioned in the article. They have no say in it. Unless you're talking perhaps about Middle Eastern farming corporations. This is a battle between relatively prosperous local small farmers and bigger corporations: Arizona was particularly attractive to Middle Eastern farmers. A policy of unregulated pumping on the Arabian Peninsula had, in 40 years, drained aquifers that had taken 20,000 years to form, leaving thousands of acres fallow and forcing Saudi Arabia and others to outsource much of their agricultural production. In 2014, a Saudi Arabian-owned company, the Almarai Corporation, bought 10,000 acres in the town of Vicksburg, northwest of Sulphur Springs Valley, planting alfalfa to ship halfway around the world to feed Saudi cattle. Then, a United Arab Emirates farming corporation, Al Dahra, bought several thousand-acre farms along both sides of the Arizona-California border. These purchases were perfectly legal, but many residents felt these newcomers were essentially “exporting water.”
• gwynn 7y ago
  You're misrepresenting the facts. In-state rivers (21% of our supply) face the same existential threat of climate change. Furthermore, groundwater aquifers (currently 40%) are not renewable. The Colorado River is Arizona’s largest renewable water supply [1]. The second the Colorado gets slapped with federal restrictions industry and citizens alike will accelerate the depletion of our aquifers and before you know it the Colorado River will be the De facto majority again. No one is suggesting we immediately shut down all agriculture, though we could with the stroke of a pen subsidize hydroponic alternatives, mandate drip irrigation, enforce water reclamation, and cap and trade further agricultural development. I do not blame immigrants either, not sure how that relates to this? I simply do not deny the fact that our current path is unsustainable. Allowing agriculture to continue to grow at this rate will only backfire on those communities and cause them to face even worse economic destruction. Showing restraint now could avoid catastrophe for everyone. [1] http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
• paulie_a 7y ago
  Great you are draining the Colorado River and absolutely fucking the entire country. You know where thos leafy greens grow better? Everywhere