Arizona’s Pipe Dream

A Times investigation revealed that in much of the United States, communities and farms are pumping out groundwater at alarming rates. Aquifers are shrinking nationwide, threatening supplies of drinking water and the country’s status as a food superpower.

Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation for The Times, went to Arizona, the state at the forefront of the crisis, and looked at one especially controversial idea to address it: desalination.

Background reading: 

[sidstovell]

I'm remembering the rationing of water in the mid-'70's in the SF Bay Area. None of my age ever just left water running ever again. We conserved water, long after that drought. We got educated; AZ??

[kenhunt]

Compare water use per person between PHX and Tucson.
Why can't Phoenix meet the levels of Tucson?
People in the Midtown area of Phoenix still flood irrigate their lawns.
More rain falls on Tucson than the Central AZ Project brings to Tucson.
Brad Lancaster, Watershed Mgmt Group and Borderlands Restoration all have programs to capture this free resource and plant the rain.
To build an almost half mile swath across the Organ Pipe NM just for lawns and golf courses seems ludicrous.
What is faster, cheaper and makes sense in the long run?
Get water use below 100 gallons per person each day.

[joehopfield]

Batsh*t crazy. If you're going to do desal, build it in southern california (solar please), then trade that fresh water for colorado river credits. Moving the water uphill from the ocean is energy madness.

[davidmcclenton]

I've been preaching this for Clark County Las Vegas/ Southern Nevada since 2020.
It's almost impossible to get people to listen and understand the growing importance of Desalination as a solution to this new age problem.

[akeleven]

Arizona has turned to groundwater to fuel unlimited development. California residents fleeing fire and high priced homes are flooding into Arizona with the insurance money they got from getting burned out.
Cochise County has dropped 20ft from pulling out ground water. The roads near me wave up and down like an ocean. There are signs warning that fizzures can open up could open up anytime as more water is sucked up to feed nut trees and dairy cows. Commercial voters defeated any attempt to regulate groundwater . Farmers are sucking it so fast that homes are going dry.
Arizona's going to be the next poster child for economic disaster.

[jessfulbright]

Everything about building massive cities in the desert flies in the face of common sense. This desalination project takes the insanity to the next level. There is a desalination project near my home, in Colorado, it is super complex, energy consumptive and extremely expensive. The US Bureau of Reclamation runs it to reduce salinity in the Colorado River. Get this, we run this project because we have a treaty with Mexico to keep the Gulf of California (aka Sea of Cortez) from becoming too salty. I guess somehow your "investigation" missed that.

[qdav]

It seems like the place to build a desalinization plant is in California, not Mexico. Arizona could help build it there to supply CA with more water, and then divert more of the Colorado River to supply AZ.

[Bernard-foqo]

You don't miss the water until the well runs dry.

[andrewlm]

How do you find more water? You use the available water differently

Desalinization and piping the water one hundred miles is an expensive proposition. Is growing Cotton and watering a golf course in the middle of the summer going to be profitable given water prices if this much work is required to get it? I am very skeptical.

As a former (and likely future) resident of AZ I enjoyed the piece but I think you’ve given this hare brained scheme (which will not be economically feasible) too much credit by doing a deep dive into the many secondary problems it could introduce. It won’t happen in our lifetimes

[happychappy]

Water or the lack of it, is like the no 1 asset shortage story of this century. This bulletin seems to be unaware of this and the discussions going on globally 😮

[MrWaterbugdesign]

I moved to Phoenix 18 years ago. I was surprised to see flood irrigated yards. Only a small percentage of yards have flood irrigation. This goes back to those who moved here first and created ditches to move water from the Salt River to their farms. That gave them rights to that water. Kind of a Catch-22 if they didn't have those water rights there wouldn't be a Phoenix here today. We mine all kinds of resources like copper, gold, oil, etc... When the resource is all taken away the town/city lose population and many become ghost towns.

Water is no different than anything else we pull out of the ground. Phoenix might get into trouble in 80-100 years, but not in the short term. Does that mean we should just leave water in the ground? Are we supposed to leave some water in the ground for future generations? How many generations? Enough water for 1, 000 years? 10, 000 years.

Keep in mind most of the water used in the Phoenix area goes to farms to grow hay to feed cattle to produce all that beef Americans love to eat.

[writersquill]

The major obstacle to positive change is arrogance— propagating ideas of unfettered housing and commercial “growth”, especially in a desert environment. The arrogance of build build build while seemingly downplaying consequences, and/or “we’ll deal with issues later as they come up” after more manufactured growth.

And why not prohibit more swimming pools, golf courses, and high water usage gardens, etc.

Just because past water projects were built doesn’t mean this pipe dream should be. Rethink “growth.”

[canadiangemstones]

Nice to hear someone reporting from atop Cameltoe Mountain.

[lauraw.]

18:45 Humans cannot keep building desalinization plants around the world without negatively impacting the salinity of the environment (the ocean).

[jaymyers]

Yadda, yadda, yadda . . . same ol' tired trash talk that "The New York Times" has been blasting against Phoenix for decades. I have lived in Phoenix for 51 years, and this podcast breezes past all the progress and all the planning that Phoenix has done for its future. We have *100 years(!)* of water supply identified and secured, i.e., already in hand. For decades, we have been pumping our excess Colorado River allotment into a vast water aquifer to the west of the White Tank Mountains, preparing for the decades ahead. We're considering desalination from a plant near Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and you criticize us for it. If we *weren't* considering desalination, then you'd be criticizing us for that. Decades ago, solar and wind farming were derided as "pipe dreams", too. This piece is nothing short of a biased hit job. There are reasons why a net of 4 million new residents have moved into metro Phoenix in the half-century that I've lived here. To listen to this podcast, you would think that all 4 million of them are myopic idiots. Your reporters arrive out here in jets, spend a couple of days slumming (in their opinions) in Arizona, then go back to New York as if they were deeply informed experts. New York City has plenty of its own issues; "New York Times", try starting by looking at yourselves in the mirror.

[jaymacpherson]

Desal in Arizona…doable…and will be VERY expensive, resulting in the state having less monetary pull for new development. Alternatively it is less expensive to recycle existing water…aka “toilet to tap.” WIFA hopefully is giving waste-water recycle a long, serious look as recycle is far more cost-effective than piping to the Sea of Cortez. My guess is WIFA doesn’t relish the hurdle of “selling” toilet-to-tap to the public.

As for the Director of WIFA’s position on growth, willArizona be an attractive place to do business if the cost of business becomes far higher than in other locations? No one knows the answer at this time. Keep in mind the existing infrastructure in Arizona is very young. The old infrastructure elsewhere in the country is driving up their water costs. What happens when Arizona’s infrastructure gets old, in conjunction with expensive-to-obtain drinking water? We do know that more water in Arizona is going to be far more expensive than it has been historically.

The environmental issues aside…Mexico citizens will be able to afford “IBE” water? They will be competing with Arizona citizens and businesses around the cost of the water, of which chip fabs may soon (already?) be the biggest and wealthiest businesses in the Phoenix region.

Many of those involved aren’t looking at this idea close enough…especially those with monetary incentive to pursue the project.

[canyonroots]

"A system built on rapid growth", sounds like the Chinese model of development.

[lauraw.]

😮😮😮let’s get this straight. Desalinization will make the ocean saltier. This will kill most currently existing life in the sea. If Mexican officials agree, the cost to provide water to the villagers should be on the desalinization plant, as the costs to the community and the environment are going to be higher than the benefits of providing water.

[happychappy]

Mankind has been installing pipelines for at least 200 years. Engineering can be solved. Politics? More tricky😊

[blindluck]

Since you all claim there is a water / environmental issue, why not help solve the problem by self deleting.