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Comment by kevinpet | Hacker News Reader

There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.

The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.

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It’s also worth nothing that the TSMC plant is basically as far north as it’s possible to be while still counting as part of the (huge) Phoenix metro area. The vast majority of the 5 million residents of that metro area are nowhere near the plant and very unlikely to be affected by it in any way.

As long as they don't have two microwaves in their household*

* humor

I don't get it...

You qould have had to watch the movie Class Of Nukem' High from Tromaville

See #15 here[0]

0, https://www.imdb.com/list/ls096019050/

*would

[flagged]

20 dollars? I wanted a peanut!

Lots of the farms exist to provide year around salad. What is more important, year around salad or computer chips? Economically, for Arizona, the answer is pretty clear.

This is also why I laugh when people in wet areas talk crap about my state's water problem. My state's problem is your problem too buddy.

Also, eating raw salad veggies (lettuce in particular) is one of the best ways to get foodborne illnesses like E. Coli.

The US is a major food exporter with a supply around 125%. Shutting down a few farms in the desert seems worthwhile.

Doing anything that uses a lot of water in a desert seems problematic to me. Water is only going to get scarcer in the west as climate change goes on.

> Water is only going to get scarcer in the west as climate change goes on.

Predictions are all over the place but the average prediction seems to say that at least half the US gets more water.

Not in the west, from what I've seen. The state I grew up in, Illinois, is definitely trending toward being more humid.

If you've seen otherwise and have references, I'm interested. I'm thinking about where to live next.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-what-climate-models-te...

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/sites/www.e-educati...

These are the ones that showed up first.

Drying in the southwest is more likely than in the northwest, probably. The specifics are all over. But the bigger distinctions tend to be north versus south.

I think the reasoning here is to have the fabrication being done away from areas where a natural disaster might cause an issue. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no heavy winter storms with a ton of snow, etc. If you locate it on an elevated area with good drainage there won't be any problems with desert storms/flooding either.

At least the fabs can recycle the majority of their water. Unlike farms which use more than is needed and are likely producing animal feed for international animals.

I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?

> I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?

That, I agree. I noticed a sibling comment also mentioned that. If the farms in question are of that kind, it is reasonable. I'd just like to object to the creation of a general sense of sacrificing farms for fabs.

Having water artificially cheap for agricultural uses is a mistake.

If you're concerned about food security, subsidize actual food that could go to people in some way, but let water hit a real market price.

Else, we end up subsidizing water for clever export and other uses we don't really want, and we remove any incentive for efficiency in water use.

> I'd just like to object to the creation of a general sense of sacrificing farms for fabs.

"I was wrong, but I think my comment was still right based on vibes, so I wasn't wrong after all."

Farms recycle the majority of their water as well. Just instead of it looping inside of a closed process it returns to the broader environment.

really stretching the definition of recycle there. Material staying within a closed loop is kind of a requirement for something to be recycled. The farms don't do anything to keep the water available and have to extract more water from other sources

Water loss from evaporation and transpiration are inevitable, and run off is a large chunk of it. Nearly half of the water used in farming is lost, and some of that becomes run off that pollutes the environment and whatever bodies of water it reaches.

theres not exactly a lack of food in this country

A fair amount of that farm water is to grow alfalfa for the Saudi's dairy industry. So it's not all essential to US food security...

Arizona and California have outdated water management laws that basically mean that big agriculture gets free water.

Until recently Saudi Arabia was using these laws to grow alfalfa in the desert.

In California, water intensive crops like almond trees get free water.

https://youtu.be/XusyNT_k-1c

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/climate/arizona-saudi-ara...

Also see the Resnicks' water storage scheme for their almond/pistachio empire:

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...

The report has a graph showing their farms consume more water then all LA homes.

  "Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown."

Yes, but... The way the law works is that the farms own that water. The state would likely have to use eminent domain and pay fair market value if they want to take it away. I have no idea what that would cost.

I mean, yes, use eminent domain to take the water… and then get TSMC to pay for it.

Maybe another big player in the system would even help build momentum to get these laws changed permanently…

This is an extremely over-simplified take. It depends on entirely on what the farms are producing, their water efficiency, etc. Nobody would seriously suggest that people go hungry so that we can have more chips, so responding as if that's the actual suggestion is unwarranted.

> Who needs food when you have 4nm chips.

Who needs logic and reason when you have false dichotomy?

We don't need farms in Phoenix. Farming in the middle of the desert where there's already limited water is pretty stupid.

The place is a desert. Growing crops in a desert takes a lot of water, as you might imagine. A smarter thing to do is to not try to grow crops in a desert where it needs so much irrigation. The US has plenty of non-desert land for growing essential crops.

desert weather is consistent(ly warm sunny). Irrigation being the missing factor means that you can have a nice long growing season, undisrupted by bad weather, or storms or any other number of unpredictable factors.

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