The Water Wars of Arizona (2018) | Hacker News Reader

The Water Wars of Arizona (2018)

nytimes.com

52 pointsnwatson44 comments

I live in Arizona. The people commenting here suggesting anyone living in a desert should be 'punished' and forced to live without toilets are completely out of touch with reality. Golf courses, lawns, and toilets are not the issue.

Rural Arizona, in the middle of nowhere in a cotton field? Yeah, you might not have well water. And that's definitely an issue.

But Arizona is not going to run out of water anytime soon. We're likely in a far better water-diverse situation than CA is already, because we've been thinking about water for a _long_ time and have some of the best water infrastructure in the U.S.

Where does it go? Arizona has 26 _million_ acres of farms and ranches, that is where:

- 70% of our water is directed towards agriculture.

- We produce 90% of the USA's leafy greens.

- Our cattle industry alone produces 8 _million_ meals annually (pop. 7.1 million).

- 360 million eggs annually

- Our agriculture industry is $23.3bn, supporting 162,000 workers (40% of which are women, and 18k indigenous farmers/ranchers),

We aren't conserving water, we're spending it because it is a valuable industry for the (unfortunately) extremely poor immigrants and others here.

But there aren't signs in our bathrooms to use less water washing our hands. You don't have to ask for a glass of water at restaurants -- because these things _don't matter_.

Want to conserve water in Arizona? You'd be talking about gutting the entire state's agriculture industry and destroying millions of people's lives.

We can diversify our water supply, and we do. It's not stupidity and lax regulation, it's a calculated risk and choice by the people living here whose lives are built on agriculture.

Meanwhile in the northeast, where water is plentiful, agriculture is grinding out of existence as its unable to compete with subsidized, scaled up desert agriculture.

Leafy greens can be grown with tunnels nearly everywhere, we shouldn’t be stuck with such a concentration in a place that is so obviously strategically dumb to put 90% of production.

Arizona produces approximately 1/4 to 1/5 of the leafy greens grown in the US, by weight, depending on the exact commodity [1]. Meanwhile, California produces roughly 3/4 of such products grown in the US. The two states participate in a seasonal rotation, where California's temperate valleys produce most of the summer crop, and in the winter production is shifted to inland desert locales in both Arizona and California.

[1] https://cals.arizona.edu/arec/sites/cals.arizona.edu.arec/fi... [2] https://californiaagnet.com/2017/11/03/a-look-at-year-round-... [3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/93033/vgs-362.... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535425#18536045

And both have massive water problems where people need to drill down further and further to find water because we pump it out faster than it can refill most because gigantic farms can pump out as much water as they want for free or for a tiny fee.. basically profiting today at the cost of our children

This is an incredibly shortsighted outlook on Arizona's reckless water usage. The bulk of our water comes from the Colorado River which is a lifeline for not just us, but for over 40 million people across six different rapidly growing states. Snowpack for the river is at its lowest level in 30+ years and is projected to decrease an additional 30% due to climate change over the next two decades. As a lower-basin state, we are "investing" water which we don't actually own. Sooner or later lake Mead is going to hit an elevation of 1,075ft and the federal government will mandate that lower-basin states such as our own face the music. Will it be our blood or the state's billions that suffer? To avoid this future, all we must do is work together to scale-down our agricultural industry in favor of other economic avenues. This pointless "calculated risk" which threatens the future of America's fifth largest city and its surrounding neighbors can be undone. Sadly, I fear that the current administration under Doug Ducey cares more about leafy greens than our children's future.

The bulk of our water usage does _not_ come from the Colorado River. 36% does.

The bulk, 64% of our water (2018), comes from our groundwater aquifers and in-state rivers (and 3% reclaimed) according to ADWR [1]

Yes, it's still important and I agree we should diversify our economy away from agriculture, but that is not something you can just do immediately especially when the citizens that industry is supporting are under-supported by both the community and the U.S. government as a whole.

I will not blame people immigrating to the U.S. for relying on one of the only jobs they can get to put food on their tables while our government actively tries to persecute and deport them, and our citizens inactively support them. These people need our agricultural industry to live, and until we give them a replacement somehow we are SOL.

[1] http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

You're misrepresenting the facts. In-state rivers (21% of our supply) face the same existential threat of climate change. Furthermore, groundwater aquifers (currently 40%) are not renewable. The Colorado River is Arizona’s largest renewable water supply [1]. The second the Colorado gets slapped with federal restrictions industry and citizens alike will accelerate the depletion of our aquifers and before you know it the Colorado River will be the De facto majority again. No one is suggesting we immediately shut down all agriculture, though we could with the stroke of a pen subsidize hydroponic alternatives, mandate drip irrigation, enforce water reclamation, and cap and trade further agricultural development. I do not blame immigrants either, not sure how that relates to this? I simply do not deny the fact that our current path is unsustainable. Allowing agriculture to continue to grow at this rate will only backfire on those communities and cause them to face even worse economic destruction. Showing restraint now could avoid catastrophe for everyone.

[1] http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

Did you read the article? It was impressively reported and provided a comprehensive account of the problem from a white working class family that relocated to the area and had their well run dry to the backroom discussions in the Arizona legislature that will ultimately dictate the future of industry and environment.

You're right that the Colorado River is irrelevant to the issue under discussion here. But the article clearly shows that the aquifers are as big a crisis:

In the late 1990s, during the first few years of what would eventually turn out to be a 19-year-and-counting Arizona drought, only about 15,000 acre-feet of water were estimated to have percolated into the aquifer each year, while 100,000 were being pumped out; as the valley continued to warm throughout the 2000s and 2010s, with rainfall and snowmelt plummeting, estimates for recharge went unrecorded, as annual pumping soared to 200,000 acre feet. Once, it had been possible for ranchers to develop natural springs into watering holes using only a shovel. Now, after watching water levels drop 100 to 300 feet in 35 years, some farmers wondered how long they could go on... In 2017 alone, one farm pumped 22 billion gallons, nearly double the volume of bottled water sold in the United States annually.

Immigrant laborers and immigration are largely a non sequitur. They're cannon fodder in this battle and scarcely mentioned in the article. They have no say in it. Unless you're talking perhaps about Middle Eastern farming corporations. This is a battle between relatively prosperous local small farmers and bigger corporations:

Arizona was particularly attractive to Middle Eastern farmers. A policy of unregulated pumping on the Arabian Peninsula had, in 40 years, drained aquifers that had taken 20,000 years to form, leaving thousands of acres fallow and forcing Saudi Arabia and others to outsource much of their agricultural production. In 2014, a Saudi Arabian-owned company, the Almarai Corporation, bought 10,000 acres in the town of Vicksburg, northwest of Sulphur Springs Valley, planting alfalfa to ship halfway around the world to feed Saudi cattle. Then, a United Arab Emirates farming corporation, Al Dahra, bought several thousand-acre farms along both sides of the Arizona-California border. These purchases were perfectly legal, but many residents felt these newcomers were essentially “exporting water.”

Great you are draining the Colorado River and absolutely fucking the entire country.

You know where thos leafy greens grow better? Everywhere

I am not a expert in this, but I believe the snowpack is 130% above average for the Colorado River: https://www.cpr.org/2019/04/19/healthy-snowpack-in-the-color...

The obvious solution is build more housing.

I agree with your point that there's blame to go around. I believe that Bobby from King Of The Hill said it best "This city should not exist. It is a monument to man's arrogance."

That's idiotic. Phoenix makes as much sense as Los Angeles and there is plenty of water from the Colorado River feeding both cities.

It takes less energy to air condition Phoenix during the summer than Minneapolis takes to heat in the winter (temperature gap desired maxes 50F vs 100F). Additionally, the energy it does take is much more amenable to being fulfilled by cheap solar than the cycle required by heating at night.

The only people who find it arrogant are ones who do not understand air conditioning is cheaper than heating and that water can be moved in aqueducts.

Nobody claims that Chicago should not exist, nor Minneapolis, nor New York. The only difference is that they depend on older heating methods instead of air conditioning.

> Phoenix makes as much sense as Los Angeles

This is true, but in the exact opposite sense you intend it.

You don't know my intent. My point is that most of the people that bitch about Phoenix are fine with the existence of Los Angeles. The remaining bit are too dumb to realize it's more energy efficient than the heat suckers of the North.

>You'd be talking about gutting the entire state's agriculture industry and destroying millions of people's lives.

I am curious why you care whether the agriculture stays in Arizona or moves to Illinois or Iowa or some such. Do you have family in agriculture?

(AZ's climate might be particularly advantageous for growing leafy greens, but cattle and eggs can be grown / produced in many places.)

Arizona and California are the folly of big government infrastructure building. Enabling unsustainable economies in places that should be desert. Unfortunately no way out except bailouts, probably.

You don't address CAP or Active Management Areas. You can't talk about Arizona water without talking about CAP and AMAs. There is a real issue of water usage outside of the AMAs. There has been since I left AZ in 2007.

But yes, it is correct that the vast majority of water in AZ goes to agriculture. California has a similar issue. Developers are required to provide 100 year water plans before moving forward. Another thing at play that would surprise a lot of people is that just 18% of land is private.

I guess I would say... True, Arizona and California produce massive amounts of produce and other agricultural output for the US (it's sunny, the climate is great, other than the lack of water). But what is it costing the environment? We all know what it is costing the environment. No one is protesting. Sadly.

To say that Arizona shouldn't exist (that we shouldn't have population centers in the middle of the desert) is laughable. Ok, Las Vegas is cancelled. Cities north enough that require massive amounts of fossil fuels to stay warm enough to be livable are cancelled. While where at it, flying for vacations (or anything not of existential importance) is cancelled. Ocean freight is cancelled.

My first job out of college was as a management and lobbyist assistant in Coconino County (Flagstaff). I read this from cover to cover when I started my job (I still have the marked up copy on my bookshelf):

https://portal.azoah.com/oedf/documents/08A-AWS001-DWR/Cente...

Water use is very, very carefully considered and scrutinized in AZ.

> "...it's a calculated risk and choice by the people living here whose lives are built on agriculture. "

Sorta. It's calculated by a subset of all stakeholders. Water rights in Arizona are slowly being purchased by developers to meet the 100 year water plan requirements. This reflects the state's move from primarily agricultural toward a more common mixture of agriculture, industry and residential. That mix doesn't have any impact on the amount of water available for use. The legal rights to CAP water, the legal rights to ground water, are already fixed and are now just being transferred from one party to the next. As AZ becomes less agriculturally productive, you can no longer argue that "we've chosen this to farm". And the shortcoming of lack of regulation of water usage outside of AMAs is still not addressed. Which I think is the point of the article.

AZ doesn’t produce 90% of leafy greens. That would be California and especially Salinas valley.

Yuma in AZ is just insurance for Salinas greens Ag companies re weather and water.

I know that SRP has over 100 years of water in reserve. They are actively planning for decades in the future.

You have a disdain for conservation because "it doesn't matter" in the face of industrial use. While I agree we need to look at the industrial use, these things are inherently different.

Reducing usage in the city preserves the city reservoir. Unless you're talking about industrial use from that same reservoir, it might not be immediately relevant.

Water from the city comes from the CAP. The reservoir is filled as needed from that and there isn't a crisis there. You can ban as many glasses of water from restaurants as you want and it won't make the slightest difference. Just slightly more CAP water will be flooded out to farmland.

Two notes.

1. This is from 2018.

2. If this interests you, read "The Water Knife", a fantastic science fiction novel about water wars in the near future.

There was an idea to build a water pipe from Wisconsin to Vegas because...reasons

Apparently they needed water for fountains and golf courses.

Art imitates life (or vice versa):

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-califor...

That's not from _The Water Knife_; it's in an earlier Bacigalupi short story, "The Tamarisk Hunter".

I thought it was tangentially related. This happened in reality but thanks for incorrecting me

As a Phoenix resident, few books have disturbed me as deeply as The Water Knife. A most plausible dystopia in my own backyard. Gives me chills.

As a Phoenix resident, the water relevant to you is the Colorado river. You are along for the same boat ride as southern California and Las Vegas.

You're even slightly advantaged over those other two because of the aquifer under Phoenix.

I can tell it will ballon soon, from all the CA secession movements trying to split water resources. It's going to get messy.

Yeah but those secession movements have zero chance of success. And longer term if the zero percent chance actually happens they would be begging the us to come back.

Meanwhile, it seems the southeast is drowning in floods.

From the title, I thought it was going to be about Tombstone vs. the Forest Service.

I’ve long had the idea for a waterless toilet — think a cat’s litter box but for people — that would be required for use in desert cities.

Think it could really be a game changer.

There’s a few: incinerating and composting.

And other very low water designs, like in jetliners.

Toilets aren’t too problematic: you can use treated sewage for irrigation or golf courses.

It’s the losses to evaporation (farming) that really consumes water from an area.

I was thinking that it is partly punitive. If you want to live in one of those places (and contribute to the rest of the waste of water there) you’re going to have to use a litter box to prove you really want it.

I would phase this in over time — i.e. no new construction or remodeled structures can include a toilet.

You're squabbling over drops while oceans go to industrial farming. The people who make money off the megafarms aren't going to be punished by your measures.

Now that’s an idea. If you own a business in an un-eco-friendly field you have to use a litter box.

Maybe fixing the structural root of the problem is more effective than coming up with fun punitive solutions that don't really work.

It does work, I assure you. I tried it in my cat’s litter box when he was asleep.

Why would you bother to hold such an absurd little idea for so long without caring to look into the actual water usage in desert regions?

Is it a lack of concern for the idea, or the people?

That’s the same thing they said to Einstein and look at him.

Edit: To clarify, I meant the bagel chain founder, not the physician.

physicist rather than physician ?

Apologies for the confusion, I meant Bob Einstein my pediatrician growing up.

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