Comment by oblib | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblib | Hacker News Reader

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"When it comes to the food people want to eat, each [4] of these regions more than pull their own weight [6]."

I don't have a problem with moving water to support agriculture in those State. That's something that was fairly well solved in the San Joaquin Valley long ago.

But that is not what this opinion piece purposes. They summed that up with "Los Angeles couldn’t exist without the California Aqueduct. Phoenix and other cities in the Southwest are in the same boat. Their future survival depends upon finding large amounts of new water."

That is an entirely different issue. In all of Arizona there are approximately 138,000 people that work in agriculture. That's not even in the top 10 industries in Phoenix. About 40% of the water used in Phoenix is used for farming. Phoenix-area residents use over 50% of the water they get from city water supplies for watering lawns and maintaining swimming pools. [1]

When you look at the growth of metro areas there it seems pretty clear to me that growth is not sustainable.

1: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/questions/how-much-water-are-w...

> About 40% of the water used in Phoenix is used for farming. Phoenix-area residents use over 50% of the water they get from city water supplies for watering lawns and maintaining swimming pools.

Granted, maintaining lawns and outdoor swimming pools in a desert is really stupid but you're zooming in on an urban (as much as you're going to get in Arizona) city where land is too valuable to make most farming worth while. If you zoom out to Maricopa county [1], despite the concentrated population of Phoenix, the numbers flip around and about 60% of the water goes to agriculture with another 10% or so industrial with the remaining 30% municipal (though to be honest, I thought those figures would look more like California with an 80-20 split at most).

Maybe if manifest destiny had played out differently and we had planned our westward expansion better all those people in Phoenix and LA would be living in the PNW or the swamps of the south and they'd still have access to Arizona lettuce and California avacados, but that ship has sailed. We can't, as a nation, have our cake by depopulating the west and eat it too by depending on all the agriculture the region produces. When push comes to shove, metro areas will get priority over agriculture and environmental concerns so the entire country is going to have to sacrifice regardless.

[1] https://www.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/73858/Maricopa-...

"but that ship has sailed" is a perfect summary of the situation because that ship is now the size of the Titanic in shallow water that will most certainly strand it and the only way to avoid that is to turn it around.

"Ten Civilizations or Nations That Collapsed From Drought":

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/ten-civilizati...

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