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Arizona limits building as groundwater dries up
- alexlesuper 3y agoAren't they building a water-hungry semiconductor fab in that state?
- Lolaccount 3y agoJust getting people used to what will be the status quo when the fab arrives!
- macintux 3y agoFrom previous discussions here I got the impression that while the initial water requirements are quite high, much of it can be recycled and re-used.
- ahi 3y agoThey're exporting 70% of their water in the form of agricultural products. That's really the only problem that needs fixing.
- hedora 3y agoAccording to their water data here: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/az/nwis/water_use?format=html_table&rdb_compression=file&wu_area=State+Total&wu_year=2015&wu_county=ALL&wu_category=ALL&wu_county_nms=--ALL%2BCounties--&wu_category_nms=--ALL%2BCategories-- https://waterdata.usgs.gov/az/nwis/water_use?format=html_tab... They are consuming 1195.15 + 987 Mgal/day of groundwater + surface water, and are supplying 963.30 Mgal/day to domestic users. Industrial uses 6.12 Mgal/day, mining uses 68.3, livestock uses 38.8, aquaculture 34.5, and irrigation uses 4528 Mgal / day. So... huh. The more I look at it, the less the data makes sense or adds up. Anyway, it does look like they could just take water away from farmers, and let people elsewhere run out of food, California style.
- tomatotomato37 3y agoIf the land it's being built on was previously thirsty farmland it may be a net positive in water usage
- RobotToaster 3y agoAs long as you don't need food.
- pfdietz 3y agoOne can import food from someplace with more water. It's the same way we don't subsidize farmers to grow bananas in Alaska, and then pretend that bananas would disappear if we stopped the subsidies.
- volkl48 3y agoThe US overproduces food to an absurd degree and isn't even remotely close to maximizing it's ability to grow it. Anyway, Ag shifted production to the Southwest because when you don't pay the actual value of the water, it's great - lots of sun, long growing season, basically free water = cheapest production. When water costs money....you'll see quite a bit of that production shift back up north.
- noodlesUK 3y agoThey mention that permits would require a sustainable water source other than groundwater. What would such a source be? Surely any water collection system would be preventing water from reaching the water table (intuitively, I am not an expert)?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andsoitis 3y agoPiping desalinated water from the coast.
- thehappypm 3y agoUphill?
- andsoitis 3y ago> Uphill? How William Mulholland Made Water Flow Uphill: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/citydig-how-william-mulholland-made-water-flow-uphill/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/citydig-how-william-mulh...
- thehappypm 3y agoCool, but less helpful when Arizona cities range from 1000 to 6000 feet higher than the water source
- mechagodzilla 3y agoBuying river water rights from someone that has an existing claim (rather than just installing a pump and taking 'free' water from the aquifer). It's not that there isn't any water at all, it's just that the water is spoken for (frequently for relatively low return activities like alfalfa farming).
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- smellyshaft1 3y ago[dead]
- gcapu 3y agoI remember going on a road trip through Arizona and seeing a lot of farms using sprinklers. This result doesn’t surprise me.
- davidw 3y agoMost water usage in western states goes towards agriculture. Only a small portion goes towards municipal uses. The real savings are cutting down on waste in ag, or rethinking certain crops.
- myshpa 3y agoMost of it goes towards animal agriculture. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-water-alfalfa-dairy-beef-meat https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-wa...
- dsab 3y agoI thought these crazy Americans wouldn't surprise me anymore with another strange unit of measurement and here's the acrefoot
- artursapek 3y ago[flagged]
- flangola7 3y ago[flagged]
- epistasis 3y agoUsing awkward units of measurement that have little compatibility results in a multiplication of even more awkward units. If you don't have a good, easy way to convert between acres and square feet, you instead need to imagine some unit custom built for the application. So rainfall is typically measured in inches, crop areas in acres, simple we will just invent an acre-foot and now people can convert their rainfall needs into water amounts. Maybe. There's probably a lesson for system design here.
- codyb 3y agoSeems fairly intuitive? Width and length of an acre with a depth of a foot
- nickpeterson 3y agoI feel like our country is extremely unprepared for what climate change is going to mean for everyone in a decade or two. It starts with insurance not covering large areas of the coast, water scarcity in dry regions, etc. Pretty soon you have expensive energy, mass migrations, widespread shortages, and politicians yelling jingoistic chants at rallies. Everyone acts like 20 years from now gas will be more expensive and we’ll get some coastal flooding. These people are hopelessly optimistic. it’s going to get really bad once the dominos start falling.
- mdgrech23 3y agohonestly the number of deniers is mind boggling.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoEven here.
- nemo44x 3y agoI think there's a difference between denying that carbon emissions into the atmosphere will create a warming and acknowledging that but not being a fear monger or climate doomer. That we don't need to quickly take drastic action that will upend numerous livelihoods and quality of life because we will be able to engineer things to limit effects of warming and probably limit it. You can acknowledge that there are problems to solve but that doesn't mean that we are doomed as some would have you believe. Even challenging the worst case models is OK as that's how these things work. There's just so many variables that blindly listening to the worst case people without considering other things is foolish.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoWith all due respect, the models have been correct since the 70s and continue to be correct, we don't assume or operate on the basis of "worst case scenario", we use ensembles of models and operate on those. The models are correct, have been correct, will continue to be correct. We lived, we live, and will continue to live with the consequences of our inaction. There is literally nothing you can express to change the mind of a person unwilling to change their beliefs in direct presence of evidence, let alone challenge them when the evidence is indirect, more abstract, or existing in the broader environment beyond themselves. Frankly speaking, if all the droughts and floods of the past few years in Europe, US, China, etc didn't cause people to wake up, nothing will and they will eventually ponder how we got where we have. > drastic action that will upend numerous livelihoods and quality of life because we will be able to engineer things to limit effects of warming and probably limit it. With all due respect, that is absolute bogus. Even the most optimistic scenarios of changing our behaviour tomorrow disagree. We could have done things since the 90s to improve the situation, and it wouldn't have reached the current state. Whether we "succeed" is not a boolean value conditioned on the average global temp increase < 2.0C. What climate scientists express is that along the way to 2.0C, we will observe many irreversible tipping points, e.g. Ice-sheet of Greenland, change of oceanic currents, yada, issues with polar vortex e.g. increased splitting which causes heat-domes and people suffer and die from heat and so on. Frankly, I don't expect that anything will change and I have made peace with it. > "Their excellent climate modelling was at least comparable in performance to one of the most influential and well-regarded climate scientists of modern history," Prof Supran said, comparing ExxonMobil's work to Nasa's James Hansen who sounded the alarm on climate in 1988. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64241994 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64241994
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- actuator 3y agoI know it is a delivery issue not supply, but it is amazing to see how much freshwater US has. US has 5 times the renewable freshwater per person as China and almost 8 times as India. US and Canada have been blessed with freshwater resources. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_renewable_water_resources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_r...
- colourgarden 3y agoTangential but RealLifeLore did a video a while back[1] outlining how Las Vegas manages water intake from Lake Mead and the Colorado River by minimising waste and having extremely efficient water processing facilities which then feed water back. Maybe there are lessons to be learned there rather than simply taking more. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U1TkIdDbRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U1TkIdDbRA
- crooked-v 3y agoFor context, it's worth nothing that most of Arizona's water use is by farmers who have basically free and unlimited access to public water sources, and grow water-retaining crops that are then shipped to other states or even countries, like Saudi Arabia [1]. The same pattern repeats in other states, where the water laws were written with a presumption that farmers get to use as much as they want for anything they want. [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-ar...
- cameldrv 3y agoSpecifically, in Arizona, water usage is: [1] * 72% Agriculture * 22% Municipal * 6% Industrial [1] https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
- manicennui 3y agoArizona is in for a healthy dose of reality much sooner than everyone thinks. It's great that they are making any effort at all to limit development based on resources actually available to support it, but there are tons of loopholes. As mentioned elsewhere, agriculture and industry are the real problem. You have nonsense like this going on: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/arizona-saudi-farm-fondomonte-water-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/arizona-saudi-farm-fondomo...
- JC770 3y agoGood job!Arizona!
- konschubert 3y agoWhy not desalination and pipelines? Climate change is coming, limiting building won’t be enough anyways.
- thehappypm 3y agoPiping water uphill is energy intensive, making it cost prohibitive
- konschubert 3y agoFor agriculture - maybe. For residential use - not so much. You can use solar and only run the pumps while the sun is shining. Which should be most days in Arizona
- mattanimation 3y agoand yet Intel is building a huge fab out here...hmmm where is the water coming from?
- DoreenMichele 3y agoany more development in the fast-growing city must rely on other sources of water -- such as under-strain rivers. BestPlaces.net tells me Phoenix averages 9 inches of rain annually and another site (below) suggests rainfall varies from 3.3 inches to more than 21 inches across the state. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Arizona/yearly-average-precipitation.php https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Arizona/yearly-averag... My recollection is that off-grid Earth Ships only need 10 inches of rainfall to have adequate water supply using catchment systems and relying on gray water for things like irrigation. Fresno, California has a rich history with regards to water development and has increased groundwater levels in some years. Anyone working in this area or interested in this issue should look up the book about that history. I believe it's called "Water for a thirsty land" and has some subtitle. (I've said this before and linked it before.)
- Roark66 3y ago>Human-caused climate change means the once-bountiful snowpack that feeds the river has dwindled. Really? "human caused"? Let me remind the author (if he reads these comments) the Earth's climate it changing all the time. Also the whole topic is a magnet for disinformation by ruthless interest groups (nation states trying to protect themselves and harm their enemies, political organisations, financial lobbies). So sorry, but I'll not believe any research in the field that isn't personally verifiable (all data and code open) also even without all the meddling interest groups do climate research/simulation is hard. Wake me up when we have some concrete results we can predict (for example drought/flood patterns), then I'll consider it more seriously. For anyone quick to label me an" anthropomorphic climate change denier" let me say I don't deny greenhouse gases cause warming, but there are two important unknowns. First how much of current climate change is caused by anthropogenic co2/methane and how much is caused by natural processes? What positive and negative feedback loops are at play planet wide? We are very far from being able to answer it with any certainty. So, an argument someone could make, until we know the impact for sure isn't it prudent to limit our greenhouse gases emissions just in case? To which I say yes, it is. And I'm all for it (nuclear and hydro power, electrification etc), but we can't shoot ourselves in the foot to scratch an itch. Yes, we should endeavour to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but when other countries (China) are emitting more and more are we to voluntarily deindustrialise ourselves in the name of being green? No way.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoReally? Climate change? Not every problem is the result of climate change. They're low on water in southern Arizona because theyre trying to build large settlements in a desert. The ground water is drying up because people who live there are sucking it out. It doesn't take a complex phenomenon to explain that deserts are dry and inhospitable.