2/22/2024 0 Comments Areas in the tri state area with inexpensive land and housing where survival would be possibleNevada, which has been growing rapidly for half a century, regularly discusses similar ideas. In Utah, where migration is driving never-before-seen growth, a legislative committee has floated the idea of building a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to refill the parched Great Salt Lake. But today, intensifying droughts and population explosions are pushing southwestern leaders to consider huge projects that would bring water from ever further away. In Arizona, more than 80% of the population relies on a man-made channel that diverts water from the Colorado River on the state’s western edge to population centers further east. Canal systems that did just that were crucial to the U.S.’ westward expansion in the 1800s. Moving water from water-rich areas to dry ones is nothing new. (As well as families, other thirsty new arrivals to the state include tech companies, whose data centers require millions of gallons of water to keep servers from overheating.) were in Arizona, according to census data, with Maricopa County, where Rio Verde Foothills is located, at number eight on the list. In 2022, four of the ten fastest-growing counties in the U.S. Yet at the same time, Arizona is enthusiastically welcoming tens of thousands of new residents-lured by cheap housing and endless sunshine-each year. Meanwhile some cities, like Tucson, have gone to great lengths to cut back on the amount of water used per resident. Since 2000, as the Colorado River has dried up, Arizona has become increasingly reliant on pumping groundwater, which today provides 41% of the state’s needs. But that is precisely the question that authorities and developers in Arizona are mulling as they look to sustain one of the nation’s biggest population booms. The answer, given the Rio Verde Foothills ’s current plight, may seem obvious. The drama in Rio Verde Foothills encapsulates, in miniature, an existential question facing the whole of Arizona: in an era where climate change is shrinking the water supply, should the desert state keep building homes that depend on water from elsewhere?
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