LA, Los Vegas, Scottsdale, etc.

[Raul-02]

I could have told 'em. I passed on opportunities to live in those places. Anyone could have told them. It was what wiped out the Aztecs.
They are running out of water. Not because water is becoming a scarce commodity. The water that was on the planet when it first spun into orbit is all still here.
It is a dynamic planet and the earth beneath us is constantly in flux. We just don't live long enough for us to have any visceral or subjective awareness of it.
No grandfather tells his kids about the mountain that moved a hundred miles south or the river that picked up and left for fairer climes. No one tells their kids "When I was little Rhode Island was over there" while pointing to a different geographic location for the whole state.
But these things happen. The continents moved, mountain ranges erupted and subsided, rivers have changed paths, and oceans have risen and subsided. Once seawater inundated the grand canyon. Well not once but maybe 400 times.
The hydrologic tables under the surface move too.

And the American West is seeing the same fate as befell the Aztecs. The water is drying up, Long ago daman fools built mega cities in deserts thinking that the water they needed would always be there. Then suburbanites and companies followed suit creating monstrous sweeping suburbs and all of it needs lots and lots of water.
But water moves, and it did and now they are all in a lot of trouble

How does one sell real estate once the whole world knows you can't get any water to that location. It is worse than living in a place where the taxes are so high no one wants to move there so you can't sell your property and get out.

The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

A community near Scottsdale, Arizona, is running out of water. Amid the finger-pointing, the real question is: how many developments will be next?

www.newyorker.com

 

[2LaneCruzer]

It's not as if we didn't or couldn't see this coming. I attended the University of New Mexico back in the late 50's, and took a year...of all things... Anthropology. I recall a speaker talking about this very subject, in the same context, and predicting the same results. I remember one thing he said about the water wells...he said "They are pumping out this fossil water that has been there for thousands or millions of years, and it's not replacing itself. It can't last forever".

 

[workinonit]

That's why Clint Eastwood and John Wayne carried canteens. There was no water in the desert. This ain't rocket science.

 

[gstrom99]

I could have told 'em.

I don't feel sorry for them. They moved to/built in a dessert.

 

[Raul-02]

It's not as if we didn't or couldn't see this coming.

some people, it seems, were either unable to see this or just incapable of controlling themselves.

 

[David Wayne]

I have seen articles about building an aquaduct to send water from the Mississippi to the Colorado.

 

[Liquidsilver]

My brother's (municipal) water bill in Colorado is actually more than 10 times higher than mine (also municipal), and I have a swimming pool. I can't imagine what people in the desert are paying.

Am I the only one surprised that desalination of seawater hasn't become a bigger thing today? I don't know if it happens on a large scale anywhere. Hmm.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

I have seen articles about building an aquaduct to send water from the Mississippi to the Colorado.

The most feasible would be pump from the upper Platte drainage to the Green River, utilizing the great divide basin as a storage reservoir.

And, install a bunch of wind turbines along the route to power the pumps. You wouldn’t need batteries, you would build pumping stations with a variety of sized pumps, and when there is enough power to run a small pump it runs. When you have enough power to run multiple pumps, and larger pumps you run them.

And, this whole issue is kind of humorous to me: My Father was a planning hydrologist for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region, in the seventies. He was telling people that the studies the Colorado River Compact, had been done during the wettest thirty year period of the tree ring records. (Central Nevada has bristlecones that are over three thousand years old).

He started telling people that if growth continued at the rate Pheonix and Las Vegas were growing, they would be out of water in 2010, and be in crisis by 2020. Everybody thought he was nuts.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

My brother's (municipal) water bill in Colorado is actually more than 10 times higher than mine (also municipal), and I have a swimming pool. I can't imagine what people in the desert are paying.

Am I the only one surprised that desalination of seawater hasn't become a bigger thing today? I don't know if it happens on a large scale anywhere. Hmm.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, paid for the construction of a couple of pilot projects in southern California in the 90s. The cities in Cali got free desalination plants, and Vegas got their right to water from the Colorado.

The press and public in all the locations went ballistic, and the Water Authority didn’t finance any more of them.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

It is a major issue across all of the SW. We have been out here for 27 years. When we first bought the property, it had an existing new well, 365 ft deep. That well only lasted 3 years before it went dry. Drilled another well at 525 ft deep.... that one lasted 3 years also. I started hauling water. A new adjoining neighbor drill 600 ft and hit water.... he has run the well dry on occasions, but he would get water back in a few hours.

The developed area (about 50 houses) had most of the 'well shares' (3 houses per well) dry up. A guy over there (from New York City) who has the only in ground pool, ran out of water. He petitioned the state regulatory commission and forced a local CoOp water system to run a new water main up to the development. Granted, being a CoOp, they can charge the customer for the cost of installing the water lines. They had 80% of the homeowners sign up.

After another couple years went by, 3 of my other neighbor's wells went dry. So, 6 of the 8 homeowners got together and asked to get community water on our road. It ended up costing each individual homeowner $28K to hook up to the system. Best $$ I ever spent.

This is, unfortunately, just a band-aid on a major problem. This drought is a major catastrophe just waiting to happen.... and it has started!