33 ms·

The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

87 points by SQL2219 4y ago

mooreds 4y ago
The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  Presumably the parent is referring to this novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
  - mooreds 4y ago
    Yup. Paints a compelling, if gritty and dystopian, view of the American Southwest in an era of 'not enough water to go around'.
- imperialdrive 4y ago
  Exactly my thought... quite freaky to see it unfolding like that.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  Eh, it's the same logic when people move to coastal areas that will be impacted by sea level rise. No one can imagine they'll be the ones who get screwed over, and certainly not if they're wealthy. As such, I'm not sure I would call it chilling so much as entirely predictable. The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place.
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    > The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place. They are solving today’s problems. The fact that our lifestyles are not even sustainable even ignoring global warming, but just from an infrastructure perspective is never addressed.
  - almost_usual 4y ago
    NOAA has a sea level rise viewer. https://coast.noaa.gov/slr https://coast.noaa.gov/slr In the Bay Area the ocean coast communities aren’t very impacted. The Bay coast is significantly impacted, Foster City is already building a levee. https://fostercitylevee.org/ https://fostercitylevee.org/
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      Building a levee now is a smart move. They don't make the water disappear, they make the water go somewhere else. Somewhere that doesn't have such a high levee, for example. In 10-15 years, the lawsuits surrounding construction of a new levee will make them take forever and cost a fortune.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    > and certainly not if they're wealthy. Because they know that politicians will step in and have the government pay their bill. Too rich to fail.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Well in their defense the government has a long history of bailing out politically connected people before they have to pay for their poor choices
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      Privatize gains, socialize losses!
    - azinman2 4y ago
bradfa 4y ago
I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this?
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- MisterTea 4y ago
  > But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. From the article: "They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” In their mind: "This is America." Meaning they are used to living in the "Land of plenty" never thinking that one day, it could end.
  - juve1996 4y ago
    > Meaning they are used to living in the "Land of plenty" never thinking that one day, it could end. This was my thought as well. The music is about to stop. Many don't realize it. Some don't believe it. Some actively deny it. But it's happening, and faster than we're ready for.
    - sbf501 4y ago
      Many of us do realize it and are just sitting here staring at the screen at work realizing what a horrible mistake it all was, and hoping the fall won't as bad as the movies lead us to believe.
      - 4y ago
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I read that as being harshly sarcastic but I'm now thinking it might be unintentional the way they make these people out to be obviously the source of their own issues. It seems like the suburbs who actually pay taxes to provide the water are being prioritised for water access and the people who intentionally built were there were no rules are upset that other people aren't following the rules.
- shakezula 4y ago
  "Government for thee, not for me" is the prevailing sentiment for these types. The article even mentions it - the "fuck you, I got mine" attitude is a core cultural identity to Americans and this is exactly how it manifests.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    That is absolutely NOT a core cultural identity to Americans. There is a tendency to want to solve things at a local or regional level that frustrates larger issues like water management. There is also a western do it yourself individualism that puts common resources in contention, but Americans aren't all some John Galt/John Wayne hybrid.
    - shakezula 4y ago
      > There is also a western do it yourself individualism that puts common resources in contention This is exactly the John Galt/John Wayne hybrid cultural identity that you're saying doesn't exist manifesting itself. That same "individualism" is why we can't come together long enough to build water infrastructure for people who belong to that same community. It's genuine insanity. Americans deserve every bit of pain we're about to experience over water rights in the coming decades because we won't acknowledge that mentality is the problem.
    - 29083011397778 4y ago
      > The pro-DWID faction grew frustrated that their neighbors, many of whom had wells, were blocking their ability to secure water for themselves. “It’s the haves and the have-nots,” Nabity said. “Literally, some neighbors were like, ‘Screw you guys. You bought a property that doesn’t have water. That’s not my issue.’ ” > Residents who didn’t like the idea of a utility formed by their neighbors found the idea of a private water provider more palatable. “I trust them,” Jackman told me. “I think they’re smart. This is what they do.” I'm not sure I entirely believe you when you say Americans as a whole have a desire to solve things as a community. That can be true of some, and maybe even the majority, but I firmly believe there's enough of a general "Fuck you, I got mine" attitude to screw over a large number of people.
citizenpaul 4y ago
I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them zombie cities or something like that.
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  I have read something similar somewhere in the sphere of StrongTowns, I believe. Basically the story goes that infrastructure was paid for by expansion, which required more infrastructure; and so the pyramid scheme was made. The people got these godawful strip malls, "stroads", and suburban sprawl. The towns kicked the problem down the road but once the expansion has to stop, the whole thing comes apart.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    It is similar to avoiding the problem of pensions by keeping the population young through population growth. As more people are being born, the population may even get younger if the growth rate is fast enough. It looks like the pension problem has been solved but once population growth stops there is nothing you can do.
- csnover 4y ago
  You are probably thinking of The Growth Ponzi Scheme[0], which was adapted into a video series by Not Just Bikes[1]. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
  - nostromo 4y ago
    Strong Towns starts with the conclusion and then creates arguments to support it. It's interesting writing, but I wouldn't take it too seriously.
joshuaheard 4y ago
On a planet that is 2/3 water, I think we can find a solution. Desalination comes to mind. We built an interstate highway system. We can build an interstate water distribution system for desalinated Pacific Ocean water.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  Desalination requires energy and the ocean is far away for a lot of people.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  For this particular situation, that's a lot of money to spend just to serve already-well-off people willingly choosing to live in the desert in a drought.
  - caramelcustard 4y ago
    Almost any significant technological innovation was expensive to provide to the public in its infancy but as the time went on, it became more accessible to the public. Right off the bat, i could name airplane transportation as a fine example.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      The flaw in this reasoning is that it requires corresponding demand among the non-wealthy. It was true for airlines (everybody likes to go on vacation); is there a particular reason to believe that the average American wants to live in a desert, particularly as the resource limitations become more obvious?
      - caramelcustard 4y ago
        Perhaps it was true for airlines, but mind you that airlines were a substantial upgrade over railways in terms of travel speed, so it's not just about vacations. "...is there a particular reason to believe that the average American wants to live in a desert..." yes and no. With the rise of "alternative lifestyles", i wouldn't be surprised if people would begin exploring the cheaper to purchase lands for development. And while, obviously, most people aren't going to live in the desert, the technology that would be developed and used could benefit in areas other than "supplying those desert weirdos with water". Alternative ways to obtain quality water to me are just like what airplane travel was in comparison to railways.
throwaway193948 4y ago
this isn’t really the suburbs. it’s a more rural area with water wells and not hooked up to the main water service new suburb developments in az are required to prove they have a 100 year water supply
- grumblez 4y ago
  Yeah that's covered in the article, but only applies to subdivisions of more than 5 houses. So the builders build larger anyway with ownership hidden in a shell game of LLCs to get around the regulation and build without that 100 year water supply.
pengaru 4y ago
This was an interesting read for me. I have a cabin on some land near Joshua Tree. There's water in the ground (300-400ft down) but I haven't bothered to put in a well, instead just hauling what little I need from the nearby town's bulk water dispenser. Unlike AZ apparently, CA doesn't allow any new construction without a secure and sufficient water supply. Installing new cisterns for receiving hauled water is no longer permitted, but existing cisterns are grandfathered in. It seems like they never make any exceptions. A nearby fire station permanently closed when their well water was found to be too toxic and they weren't permitted to install a cistern for hauled water. It seems like AZ could solve this issue state-wide by adopting a similar permitting requirement, instead of having these parcels-of-5 loopholes enabling entire subdivisions to be built without water. The problems my area has been dealing with are illegal agriculture (large marijuana grows) depleting the ground water, and there's always some hare-brained commercial plan trying to plow through the red-tape and resell the cheap but finite groundwater in one form or another.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Yeah, it's dumb: people on cisterns will be far more conscious of their consumption (and possible reuses) than someone on a well or municipal connection. And hauled water will have better quality assurance than what comes out of a well. But I have similar experience at a cabin without winterized plumbing and an iffy cistern, so over winter we haul in water too and melt more as needed. Probably going to install an incinerating toilet to augment the privy one day. It really makes you think about need vs. want. Lots of great USB-rechargeable pumps for hand-washing and shower head doo-hickeys these days.
  - bcbrown 4y ago
    > Probably going to install an incinerating toilet That reminds me of one of my favorite sentences: "Yes, while some of you may think nothing of pooping into a mechanical box of fire, the prospect is a rather new idea for yours truly."
nostromo 4y ago
I'll voice an unpopular opinion: people should live in these dry areas. Deserts have wildlife, yes, but they have much less biomass than the other places humans live. A person living in Arizona or Nevada is displacing much less natural wildlife than a person like me, living in Seattle. So I say let's embrace people living in water-starved areas like the Southwest. We can enable it by smart water usage, like you see in Vegas, combined with things like smart water diversion and desalinization.
- thescriptkiddie 4y ago
  People who live in cities have far smaller environmental footprints than people living in suburbs or rural areas.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  What natural wildlife is someone on the 10th floor of a century-old apartment building displacing? Last time I checked, Vegas also gets the majority of its water from the Colorado River, including via Lake Mead. No amount of smart water usage is going to change the macro climate patterns here.
  - nostromo 4y ago
    The majority of Seattle's land use is single family houses, not unlike cities in the Southwest. Besides, apartment buildings exist in desert cities too. The question wasn't about density, it was about building in deserts or not. Building in deserts is better for the environment.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Sure, but it's all about proportions, both for existing and new residential construction. I would be very surprised if Arizona either has or is building high-density apartment housing at the rate that Seattle or any other dense coastal state is. There's simply less incentive to.
legitster 4y ago
I'll be a resident contrarian and argue that building more houses in the SW is a good thing. - The desert is probably the best place to build sprawling metropolises with the lowest ecological impact (overall) - Cooling is more energy efficient than heating. - Houses in places like AZ are implicitly less wasteful (no lawns, better insulated, etc). - People like it But the question is how to get water to these places? Especially knowing now that the Colorado River Compact was designed when rainfall was at historic highs. But I don't think there is any long term solution that doesn't involve California giving up on taking other state's water to grow high-intensity agriculture.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Point 3 - the article explicitly mentioned lawn sprinklers, a pool for bathing horses, and some other things that most definitely DO waste water. And are they required to be better insulated?
  - legitster 4y ago
    Sure, but on average less than northern cities. At the end of the day, I don't actually care about moralizing what's wasteful or not if the owner is being charged the proper cost to acquire. If that's $1 a gallon for solar and desalination/recycled water, enjoy that lawn. (Pedantic person side note: pools are not actually that wasteful. If they are properly covered when not in use, evaporative loss is actually pretty minimal).
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      > Sure, but on average less than northern cities. This isn't true. Compare NYC's average of 117 GPD[1] to TMWA's 165 GPD[2]. That's 40% more water use, per individual. The last year that NYC's residents came close to using that much water was 1996. [1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/history-of-drought-water-consumption.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/history-of-drought-water... [2]: https://www.nevadatomorrow.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=11315&localeId=1813 https://www.nevadatomorrow.org/indicators/index/view?indicat...
paulcole 4y ago
> “Like, a scrambling-for-your-toilet-water-every-month kind of thing.” A few years ago I saw this coming and invented the Waterless Toilet. It's like a kitty litter box but for people who live in areas like those discussed in the article. Why scramble for toilet water when you can just use the Waterless Toilet? I've been trying to get funding for this so please reach out if interested.
- gigaflop 4y ago
  The Litter Bot people might beat you to it. They have a semi-automatic solution that works for cats, and they can probably reuse a lot of their existing patents to build a human-compatible device. Maybe it would still be usable by cats, too?
- kuzuman 4y ago
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  There's many designs that are used all over. I like my cabin's privy and going to do some upgrades to make it odourless: solar powered exhaust fan. In the desert where the water table is hundreds of feet below you (and getting lower!), groundwater contamination isn't exactly an issue. But there's also composting toilets and incinerating toilets that exist. A fancy incinerating toilet costs like $5k (Cinderalla toilet, I'm looking at you!), but I'm sure they'll cost a fraction of that in time. But there is an electricity cost to each 'flush' then.
- blastro 4y ago
  Buckminster Fuller made a few designs for this, as well.
- occz 4y ago
  Interesting. How is this different from a composting toilet? Those are already an available option for people with limited access to water and sewage infrastructure.
  - 4y ago
voisin 4y ago
I highly recommend anyone interested in solutions to read “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” by Brad Lancaster. Link below. Also, he has a great video on YouTube with some of the concepts at a high level (from a TEDx) - don’t let his enthusiasm at the beginning detract from the seriousness of his message! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49338099 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49338099
crikeyjoe 4y ago
California refuses to desalinate, which would solve all the problems. I thought they were smart, instead they're political. They'd rather kill off the southwest. Assholes.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  The Carlsbad, CA desal plant is 20m from me and currently produces 50 million gallons/day. What do you mean by "California refuses to desalinate"?
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  Desalinated water is $1000+ per acre-foot, while water from existing water infrastructure is heavily subsidized and sold for a few dollars per acre-foot to farmers. There are many reasonable arguments as to why we should not be building new infrastructure that produces water at 100x the cost it is currently sold at. Nearly all water projects in the west in the last hundred years are “political”, not economic.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    OP sounds like someone not from 'the west'. Water has always been political in the western US and will always be. Like, there is this little Rep.-Dem. divide out here, but when push comes to shove, the real divide is water rights. Hell Chinatown was all about water. California's water wars [0] go back a long ways, and those struggles are emblematic of all western US states to some degree. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars
  - crikeyjoe 4y ago
    You'd think someone would solve that problem, I guess all those techies in California really are stupid.
cookrn 4y ago
I wonder how much this situation is being affected by large-scale deep agricultural wells? I think Arizona is a big foreign exporter (Saudi and China) of alfalfa for animal feed. Kinda wild to drain aquifers for export...

87 points by SQL2219 4y ago

The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.

Pet_Ant 4y ago
Presumably the parent is referring to this novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
- mooreds 4y ago
  Yup. Paints a compelling, if gritty and dystopian, view of the American Southwest in an era of 'not enough water to go around'.
imperialdrive 4y ago
Exactly my thought... quite freaky to see it unfolding like that.
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
Eh, it's the same logic when people move to coastal areas that will be impacted by sea level rise. No one can imagine they'll be the ones who get screwed over, and certainly not if they're wealthy. As such, I'm not sure I would call it chilling so much as entirely predictable. The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  > The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place. They are solving today’s problems. The fact that our lifestyles are not even sustainable even ignoring global warming, but just from an infrastructure perspective is never addressed.
- almost_usual 4y ago
  NOAA has a sea level rise viewer. https://coast.noaa.gov/slr https://coast.noaa.gov/slr In the Bay Area the ocean coast communities aren’t very impacted. The Bay coast is significantly impacted, Foster City is already building a levee. https://fostercitylevee.org/ https://fostercitylevee.org/
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    Building a levee now is a smart move. They don't make the water disappear, they make the water go somewhere else. Somewhere that doesn't have such a high levee, for example. In 10-15 years, the lawsuits surrounding construction of a new levee will make them take forever and cost a fortune.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > and certainly not if they're wealthy. Because they know that politicians will step in and have the government pay their bill. Too rich to fail.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Well in their defense the government has a long history of bailing out politically connected people before they have to pay for their poor choices
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    Privatize gains, socialize losses!
  - azinman2 4y ago

bradfa 4y ago

I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this?

newaccount2021 4y ago
MisterTea 4y ago
> But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. From the article: "They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” In their mind: "This is America." Meaning they are used to living in the "Land of plenty" never thinking that one day, it could end.
- juve1996 4y ago
  > Meaning they are used to living in the "Land of plenty" never thinking that one day, it could end. This was my thought as well. The music is about to stop. Many don't realize it. Some don't believe it. Some actively deny it. But it's happening, and faster than we're ready for.
  - sbf501 4y ago
    Many of us do realize it and are just sitting here staring at the screen at work realizing what a horrible mistake it all was, and hoping the fall won't as bad as the movies lead us to believe.
    - 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I read that as being harshly sarcastic but I'm now thinking it might be unintentional the way they make these people out to be obviously the source of their own issues. It seems like the suburbs who actually pay taxes to provide the water are being prioritised for water access and the people who intentionally built were there were no rules are upset that other people aren't following the rules.

shakezula 4y ago
"Government for thee, not for me" is the prevailing sentiment for these types. The article even mentions it - the "fuck you, I got mine" attitude is a core cultural identity to Americans and this is exactly how it manifests.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  That is absolutely NOT a core cultural identity to Americans. There is a tendency to want to solve things at a local or regional level that frustrates larger issues like water management. There is also a western do it yourself individualism that puts common resources in contention, but Americans aren't all some John Galt/John Wayne hybrid.
  - shakezula 4y ago
    > There is also a western do it yourself individualism that puts common resources in contention This is exactly the John Galt/John Wayne hybrid cultural identity that you're saying doesn't exist manifesting itself. That same "individualism" is why we can't come together long enough to build water infrastructure for people who belong to that same community. It's genuine insanity. Americans deserve every bit of pain we're about to experience over water rights in the coming decades because we won't acknowledge that mentality is the problem.
  - 29083011397778 4y ago
    > The pro-DWID faction grew frustrated that their neighbors, many of whom had wells, were blocking their ability to secure water for themselves. “It’s the haves and the have-nots,” Nabity said. “Literally, some neighbors were like, ‘Screw you guys. You bought a property that doesn’t have water. That’s not my issue.’ ” > Residents who didn’t like the idea of a utility formed by their neighbors found the idea of a private water provider more palatable. “I trust them,” Jackman told me. “I think they’re smart. This is what they do.” I'm not sure I entirely believe you when you say Americans as a whole have a desire to solve things as a community. That can be true of some, and maybe even the majority, but I firmly believe there's enough of a general "Fuck you, I got mine" attitude to screw over a large number of people.

citizenpaul 4y ago

I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them zombie cities or something like that.

metalliqaz 4y ago
I have read something similar somewhere in the sphere of StrongTowns, I believe. Basically the story goes that infrastructure was paid for by expansion, which required more infrastructure; and so the pyramid scheme was made. The people got these godawful strip malls, "stroads", and suburban sprawl. The towns kicked the problem down the road but once the expansion has to stop, the whole thing comes apart.
- imtringued 4y ago
  It is similar to avoiding the problem of pensions by keeping the population young through population growth. As more people are being born, the population may even get younger if the growth rate is fast enough. It looks like the pension problem has been solved but once population growth stops there is nothing you can do.
csnover 4y ago
You are probably thinking of The Growth Ponzi Scheme[0], which was adapted into a video series by Not Just Bikes[1]. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
- nostromo 4y ago
  Strong Towns starts with the conclusion and then creates arguments to support it. It's interesting writing, but I wouldn't take it too seriously.

joshuaheard 4y ago

On a planet that is 2/3 water, I think we can find a solution. Desalination comes to mind. We built an interstate highway system. We can build an interstate water distribution system for desalinated Pacific Ocean water.

MisterTea 4y ago
Desalination requires energy and the ocean is far away for a lot of people.
crooked-v 4y ago
For this particular situation, that's a lot of money to spend just to serve already-well-off people willingly choosing to live in the desert in a drought.
- caramelcustard 4y ago
  Almost any significant technological innovation was expensive to provide to the public in its infancy but as the time went on, it became more accessible to the public. Right off the bat, i could name airplane transportation as a fine example.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    The flaw in this reasoning is that it requires corresponding demand among the non-wealthy. It was true for airlines (everybody likes to go on vacation); is there a particular reason to believe that the average American wants to live in a desert, particularly as the resource limitations become more obvious?
    - caramelcustard 4y ago
      Perhaps it was true for airlines, but mind you that airlines were a substantial upgrade over railways in terms of travel speed, so it's not just about vacations. "...is there a particular reason to believe that the average American wants to live in a desert..." yes and no. With the rise of "alternative lifestyles", i wouldn't be surprised if people would begin exploring the cheaper to purchase lands for development. And while, obviously, most people aren't going to live in the desert, the technology that would be developed and used could benefit in areas other than "supplying those desert weirdos with water". Alternative ways to obtain quality water to me are just like what airplane travel was in comparison to railways.

throwaway193948 4y ago

this isn’t really the suburbs. it’s a more rural area with water wells and not hooked up to the main water service new suburb developments in az are required to prove they have a 100 year water supply

grumblez 4y ago
Yeah that's covered in the article, but only applies to subdivisions of more than 5 houses. So the builders build larger anyway with ownership hidden in a shell game of LLCs to get around the regulation and build without that 100 year water supply.

pengaru 4y ago

This was an interesting read for me. I have a cabin on some land near Joshua Tree. There's water in the ground (300-400ft down) but I haven't bothered to put in a well, instead just hauling what little I need from the nearby town's bulk water dispenser. Unlike AZ apparently, CA doesn't allow any new construction without a secure and sufficient water supply. Installing new cisterns for receiving hauled water is no longer permitted, but existing cisterns are grandfathered in. It seems like they never make any exceptions. A nearby fire station permanently closed when their well water was found to be too toxic and they weren't permitted to install a cistern for hauled water. It seems like AZ could solve this issue state-wide by adopting a similar permitting requirement, instead of having these parcels-of-5 loopholes enabling entire subdivisions to be built without water. The problems my area has been dealing with are illegal agriculture (large marijuana grows) depleting the ground water, and there's always some hare-brained commercial plan trying to plow through the red-tape and resell the cheap but finite groundwater in one form or another.

Scoundreller 4y ago
Yeah, it's dumb: people on cisterns will be far more conscious of their consumption (and possible reuses) than someone on a well or municipal connection. And hauled water will have better quality assurance than what comes out of a well. But I have similar experience at a cabin without winterized plumbing and an iffy cistern, so over winter we haul in water too and melt more as needed. Probably going to install an incinerating toilet to augment the privy one day. It really makes you think about need vs. want. Lots of great USB-rechargeable pumps for hand-washing and shower head doo-hickeys these days.
- bcbrown 4y ago
  > Probably going to install an incinerating toilet That reminds me of one of my favorite sentences: "Yes, while some of you may think nothing of pooping into a mechanical box of fire, the prospect is a rather new idea for yours truly."

nostromo 4y ago

I'll voice an unpopular opinion: people should live in these dry areas. Deserts have wildlife, yes, but they have much less biomass than the other places humans live. A person living in Arizona or Nevada is displacing much less natural wildlife than a person like me, living in Seattle. So I say let's embrace people living in water-starved areas like the Southwest. We can enable it by smart water usage, like you see in Vegas, combined with things like smart water diversion and desalinization.

thescriptkiddie 4y ago
People who live in cities have far smaller environmental footprints than people living in suburbs or rural areas.
woodruffw 4y ago
What natural wildlife is someone on the 10th floor of a century-old apartment building displacing? Last time I checked, Vegas also gets the majority of its water from the Colorado River, including via Lake Mead. No amount of smart water usage is going to change the macro climate patterns here.
- nostromo 4y ago
  The majority of Seattle's land use is single family houses, not unlike cities in the Southwest. Besides, apartment buildings exist in desert cities too. The question wasn't about density, it was about building in deserts or not. Building in deserts is better for the environment.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Sure, but it's all about proportions, both for existing and new residential construction. I would be very surprised if Arizona either has or is building high-density apartment housing at the rate that Seattle or any other dense coastal state is. There's simply less incentive to.

legitster 4y ago

I'll be a resident contrarian and argue that building more houses in the SW is a good thing. - The desert is probably the best place to build sprawling metropolises with the lowest ecological impact (overall) - Cooling is more energy efficient than heating. - Houses in places like AZ are implicitly less wasteful (no lawns, better insulated, etc). - People like it But the question is how to get water to these places? Especially knowing now that the Colorado River Compact was designed when rainfall was at historic highs. But I don't think there is any long term solution that doesn't involve California giving up on taking other state's water to grow high-intensity agriculture.

alistairSH 4y ago
Point 3 - the article explicitly mentioned lawn sprinklers, a pool for bathing horses, and some other things that most definitely DO waste water. And are they required to be better insulated?
- legitster 4y ago
  Sure, but on average less than northern cities. At the end of the day, I don't actually care about moralizing what's wasteful or not if the owner is being charged the proper cost to acquire. If that's $1 a gallon for solar and desalination/recycled water, enjoy that lawn. (Pedantic person side note: pools are not actually that wasteful. If they are properly covered when not in use, evaporative loss is actually pretty minimal).
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > Sure, but on average less than northern cities. This isn't true. Compare NYC's average of 117 GPD[1] to TMWA's 165 GPD[2]. That's 40% more water use, per individual. The last year that NYC's residents came close to using that much water was 1996. [1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/history-of-drought-water-consumption.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/history-of-drought-water... [2]: https://www.nevadatomorrow.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=11315&localeId=1813 https://www.nevadatomorrow.org/indicators/index/view?indicat...

paulcole 4y ago

> “Like, a scrambling-for-your-toilet-water-every-month kind of thing.” A few years ago I saw this coming and invented the Waterless Toilet. It's like a kitty litter box but for people who live in areas like those discussed in the article. Why scramble for toilet water when you can just use the Waterless Toilet? I've been trying to get funding for this so please reach out if interested.

gigaflop 4y ago
The Litter Bot people might beat you to it. They have a semi-automatic solution that works for cats, and they can probably reuse a lot of their existing patents to build a human-compatible device. Maybe it would still be usable by cats, too?
kuzuman 4y ago
Scoundreller 4y ago
There's many designs that are used all over. I like my cabin's privy and going to do some upgrades to make it odourless: solar powered exhaust fan. In the desert where the water table is hundreds of feet below you (and getting lower!), groundwater contamination isn't exactly an issue. But there's also composting toilets and incinerating toilets that exist. A fancy incinerating toilet costs like $5k (Cinderalla toilet, I'm looking at you!), but I'm sure they'll cost a fraction of that in time. But there is an electricity cost to each 'flush' then.
blastro 4y ago
Buckminster Fuller made a few designs for this, as well.
occz 4y ago
Interesting. How is this different from a composting toilet? Those are already an available option for people with limited access to water and sewage infrastructure.
- 4y ago

voisin 4y ago

I highly recommend anyone interested in solutions to read “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” by Brad Lancaster. Link below. Also, he has a great video on YouTube with some of the concepts at a high level (from a TEDx) - don’t let his enthusiasm at the beginning detract from the seriousness of his message! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49338099 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49338099

crikeyjoe 4y ago

California refuses to desalinate, which would solve all the problems. I thought they were smart, instead they're political. They'd rather kill off the southwest. Assholes.

CharlesW 4y ago
The Carlsbad, CA desal plant is 20m from me and currently produces 50 million gallons/day. What do you mean by "California refuses to desalinate"?
mechagodzilla 4y ago
Desalinated water is $1000+ per acre-foot, while water from existing water infrastructure is heavily subsidized and sold for a few dollars per acre-foot to farmers. There are many reasonable arguments as to why we should not be building new infrastructure that produces water at 100x the cost it is currently sold at. Nearly all water projects in the west in the last hundred years are “political”, not economic.
- Balgair 4y ago
  OP sounds like someone not from 'the west'. Water has always been political in the western US and will always be. Like, there is this little Rep.-Dem. divide out here, but when push comes to shove, the real divide is water rights. Hell Chinatown was all about water. California's water wars [0] go back a long ways, and those struggles are emblematic of all western US states to some degree. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars
- crikeyjoe 4y ago
  You'd think someone would solve that problem, I guess all those techies in California really are stupid.

cookrn 4y ago

I wonder how much this situation is being affected by large-scale deep agricultural wells? I think Arizona is a big foreign exporter (Saudi and China) of alfalfa for animal feed. Kinda wild to drain aquifers for export...