Saturday, June 3, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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For decades, Western cities like Las Vegas and Tucson, Ariz., have embraced water conservation and recycling as a means of preparing for a multidecade drought like the one we’re experiencing. Despite our best efforts, our neighbors in Southern California, Northern Arizona and Utah have not always followed our lead. Cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles and St. George, Utah, have been allowed to grow at an explosive pace with little planning for where water would come from or how long the supply would last.
But now, the combination of long-term climate change and the megadrought parching the Southwest for the past two decades may have finally dried up the West’s explosive growth. Arizona officials put developers in the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan area, Phoenix, on alert last week after determining that there is not enough groundwater available to support existing permits for residential development, let alone new applications.
While officials said they would not seek to revoke permits for projects that are already approved, they would work with developers to implement new water conservation measures and possibility negotiate to stop construction on certain subdivisions in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. Moving forward, new project proposals will need to prove that they have 100 years of water available without depleting groundwater.
It’s a sign of looming trouble in Arizona and across the West that the delicate balance of surface water and groundwater is no longer sustainable for a rapidly growing population.
On the surface, rising temperatures are causing rivers, lakes and reservoirs like the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell to evaporate more quickly. Simultaneously, the same temperature increases mean that humans and crops need more water to survive the scorching heat and dry air of the desert. So, more water is removed from the rivers and reservoirs, making them warmer, shallower and subject to increased evaporation. Rinse and repeat. Until the water runs out.
As surface water dries up, demand for groundwater increases to make up the difference. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. But groundwater is a largely finite resource that takes thousands of years to replenish. Replenishing groundwater will only take longer as surface water supplies diminish. It’s an unsustainable model that has placed growth and development in the West on a collision course with the region’s water supply.
Unless developers can figure out a stable and long-term source of abundant water, the division between our society’s haves and have-nots won’t only be defined exclusively by their access to wealth but by their access to water.
Housing in communities with reliable water will become more limited and more competitive, causing prices to skyrocket. In rural communities, which are more likely to be inhabited by low-income families and less likely than their urban counterparts to have modern water infrastructure, home values would plummet as buyers avoid areas that lack a reliable and sustainable source of water.
This isn’t speculation or conjecture. It’s already happening. Residents of Rio Verde, a community east of Phoenix, turned on the tap earlier this year to learn they had run out of water. They joined dozens of other cities and towns across the desert southwest whose taps have run dry and now lack access to safe and reliable drinking water.
The California Water Resource Control Board classifies nearly 400 of the state’s water systems, which serve just under a million people, as “failing.” Another 490 systems serving 1.3 million Californians are “at risk.” This, in a state that has largely refused to embrace even basic water conservation measures and whose southern desert landscape is now replete with lush green lawns.
For long-time residents of Las Vegas and Tucson, who have for decades been leaders in embracing water conservation and water recycling measures, it’s infuriating. Despite our best efforts to prepare for the future, the irresponsibility of our neighbors will still leave us holding the bill for the West’s dwindling water supplies.
Technology and infrastructure such as pipelines and desalination projects may ultimately provide solutions, but they are expensive almost beyond belief. A Bureau of Reclamation analysis of a proposed pipeline to move floodwater from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River found that to be effective, the pipe would need to be 88 feet in diameter and would be the single most expensive public works project in the history of the United States. Those are costs that would inevitably be passed on to homeowners, renters and other consumers of water in the West.
Given that agriculture uses 70% to 80% of all water in the West, the rising cost of water will also mean a rising cost in food prices, either because farmers will have to pay more to irrigate their crops, or because they will sell their water rights and stop growing crops, decreasing supply. Either way, it’s consumers who will pay more.
That’s why the federal government must step in and protect the country from the dangers posed by climate change in the West. That will mean forcing bad actors in Utah, Arizona and especially California to do more to conserve our precious water resources.
The United States can ill afford steep and lasting inflation in its food and water prices, let alone 40 million climate refugees. The time to act is now.
