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Arizona’s dry future begins as Colorado River shrinks
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
- bombcar 5y agoIf the seas rise so high as to need the Rocky Mountains to keep them out we’ve bigger problems than climate change. Time to divert the Columbia down the coast to LA.
- tjr225 5y agoEven a 10 foot high sea level rise preserves most of the residential areas of every single major metro on the west coast. My guess is the GP is unfamiliar with them and is just saying weird random shit for some reason.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agohttps://archive.ph/K6aYB https://archive.ph/K6aYB
- notch656a 5y agoAgriculture consumes something like 3 of every 4 units of water in Arizona. But 'consumers of desert lettuce are on a short leash' doesn't make quite as good of a headline.
- bombcar 5y ago36% is agricultural apparently (it’s like 70% see comments below, I found some unrelated Colorado River). https://www.lcra.org/water/water-supply-planning/water-use-summary/ https://www.lcra.org/water/water-supply-planning/water-use-s...
- notch656a 5y ago"Irrigated agriculture is the largest user of water in Arizona, consuming about 74 percent of the available water supply. In the past, this percentage was as high as 90 percent;" [0] [0] https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture#:~:text=Irrigated%20agriculture%20is%20the%20largest,of%20the%20available%20water%20supply https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture#:~:text=Irr....
- bombcar 5y agoWe have too many Colorado rivers outside of Colorado. Let’s dam it and shut it down.
- pooper 5y agoExactly. When it comes to water, Colorado comes first. Colorado gets all the water it needs and wants. If there is anything left over, then lower areas can have some of the water. If not, they don't get any.
- bombcar 5y agoWhiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting. Some of the oldest laws in the US are water distribution agreements.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoTrue in some senses. But the Colorado River Compact was finalized in 1946. US water law in the west is also based on private water rights, a "first in time, first in right" approach that is completely different from the east (say, east of the 100th meridian). Out here, governments have no authority to dictate patterns of water usage across a watershed (for example) in times when such regulation might be to the benefit of everyone. If I have 3 acre feet of water rights, then if I can actually get 3 acre feet out of my well(s), I get to use it regardless of the general water situation. These laws discarded (in NM at least) much older water management practices imported by the Spanish who had learned them from the Moors. These allowed for a "majordomo" who would regulate water usage on a community-wide basis, depending on the availability, need and community benefit. The US almost completely overthrew these systems after taking control here.
- icegreentea2 5y agoWill probably see increased uptake of drip irrigation if shortages persist.
- silisili 5y agoI'm not in the business to know feasibility...but I've lived all over. Out west, depending on area, it seems there's -too- much sun and everyone has solar panels. Back east(and potentially PNW, but I've never lived there) it rains so much people tire of it. Is there no way states can like...organize a trade? Clean power for clean water? Or is piping that much water around not realistic? I know it's a naive take, just felt weird seeing and living on both sides.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThe agriculture shouldn't be there in the first place. This would just reinforce bad public policy. The places with an abundance of water also have a lot of underutilized land.
- throwaway892238 5y agoSo you pass a law that says no farming in NM? That doesn't fix the rest of the water access policy once the water keeps dwindling. States will keep arguing among themselves and the federal government won't get involved until after a few years of FEMA handouts. Policy isn't going to be able to fix this because people won't want to sacrifice. Even if people in AZ and NM welcome regulation, the other states that aren't hurt as bad won't be willing to compromise any of their water or farming rights. Unless there is a quid pro quo, people in southwestern states are just fucked.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI live in NM, and while I may be in a minority here for now, I'd happily support a bill that at the very least banned agriculture that used flood irrigation in NM. A bill that outright banned commercial agriculture might be too much, but I wouldn't rule it out of order if the current drought were to last for say, another 50 years.
- autarch 5y agoAnyone else read The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi? It's a near future SF novel about water shortages in the American southwest. It definitely made me sure I'd never want to move to Arizona or New Mexico.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI really enjoyed the book. I live in New Mexico. It's a little unclear to me how realistic the scenario painted there is, for the simple reason that the main problem with water in the US southwest is commercial agriculture, which uses 75% or more of all the water in these areas. This is the result of ideas promulgated in the first 3-4 decades of the 20th century (the Bureau of Reclamation) which touted the idea of a garden paradise, based largely on the unusually wet couple of decades that had just happened. If you eliminated commercial agriculture in the US southwest (let's conveniently pretend that this doesn't cover the Central Valley of CA), there's plenty of water for everything else, even in the middle of the worst drought in 1200 years. The book doesn't appear to deal with this very well. Still, great story and very imaginative. [ EDIT: one idea I did really like in the book was the part about the federal government allowing states to ban inter-state migration, so that the "Zoners" (people from AZ) could not move, and would effectively become refugees within their own state and nation ]
- 49yearsold 5y agoProbably you also should make plans not to live in California - this state is also experiencing quite severe droughts year after year - probably will be same fate as Arizona in maybe couple decades?
- qiskit 5y agoNot sure making residential decisions based on SF novels is a wise idea. Arizona has been one of the fastest growing states for many years now. So has nevada and utah. If the population and economic activity is there, the water will find its way there one way or another.
- photochemsyn 5y agoWhen you go to turn on the tap and nothing comes out, the next thing that happens is that economic activity grinds to a halt, much as it does when the power supply goes down. Who wants to visit Nevada if there's no water in your hotel to take a shower, just drinking water only? Now, maybe if the snowpack is gone and the rivers are dry someone could set up a gigantic solar desalination plant on the California coast and start producing water to be piped to Nevada and Arizona... which would need more gigantic solar plants to produce the electricity to power the pumps. Someone will have to pay for that, and the costs will be pretty high. Probably higher than the revenue from the tourism or agriculture in the region. What happens then? People leave the region.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI have previously recommended the books Salt Dreams and Water for a thirsty land for anyone interested in water issues. I will add that there is decades old research on how to plant trees in the desert in their own local catchment to help them survive on rainwater and Earthships are a known technology for living lightly on the land. My recollection is you can adequately supply an earth ship with water for as little as 10 inches of local rainfall annually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29696251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29696251
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoMore reading suggestions from Jeff Fleck's article "If you read two books about the West’s water problems, one of them probably shouldn’t be Cadillac Desert." http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2015/07/if-you-read-two-books-about-the-wests-water-problems-one-of-them-probably-shouldnt-be-cadillac-desert/ http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2015/07/if-you-read-two-books-...
- eesmith 5y agoFWIW, Scottsdale gets just under 10" per year, Phoenix only 7.2". Taos, heart of the Earthship movement, gets 12".
- mvkel 5y agoArizona is already a place that is uninhabitable to humans for 4 months of the year without a cooling chain (air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned work). Basic survival there already requires artificial means; adding water to the requirements list only makes sense.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoArizona, like NM, is a state of some substantial climate range. Yes, Phoenix in summer is close to uninhabitable without cooling, even with adobe/stone construction and properly designed ventilation. But head north to Flagstaff and the story is entirely different. Well designed structures are entirely comfortable there even in the middle of summer. On the other hand, it is also cold enough to require significant heating during winter.
- School-Cotton 5y ago> Arizona is already a place that is uninhabitable to humans for 4 months of the year without a cooling chain Humans lived in Arizona thousands of years before air conditioning was invented.
- mvkel 5y agoAbsolutely they did. They also didn't wear clothes, or have shelters with walls. So if we went back to that, we could definitely stretch out a few more decades of habitability. It's also fair to say that the temps, even as few as 500 years ago, were much different than they are now.