8/12/2023 0 Comments City of phoenix water bill historyJohn Hornewer is now driving up to three hours one way just to find water to buy and fill his trucks to deliver to the community of Rio Verde Foothills, which largely ran out of water January first. "And you know what? They can't because there's not enough of it and it's already over-allocated." "For a long time a lot of those master planned community developers just thought well, we'll get to be able to do this, we'll get to be able to use this groundwater," Ferris says. One person sounding the alarms is Kathy Ferris, an attorney and former director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Most developers in cities like Buckeye already had approval to build or expand planned communities and resorts from state and local regulators.īut as is the case across the arid West, a lot of Arizona's rules on development and water are based on estimates - some written in cooler times - when most people didn't believe the Colorado River might actually run dry. And it's not like the Hobbs groundwater report stopped new construction. People are even talking about a rescue plan to build a desalination plant on the Sea of Cortez and pipe water across Mexico to here. "It's scary to think about, but we're trying to change the direction that we're headed in so those things don't happen. ![]() "When I see these headlines I think, yeah, if we continue on the path we're on, there might be an ecological disaster, there might be a real problem," Fleck says. The city of Peoria's water advisor Brett Fleck says they've been trying to wean themselves off the river for years. West Valley suburbs have also spent millions on conservation and recycling. ![]() Many cities have been pumping a lot of their Colorado River water into the underground aquifers where they've stored it for years. "We have largely decoupled urban growth from an increase in water demand," Porter says. Agriculture still uses the bulk of all the available water in Arizona - around 70%. Phoenix and most of its suburbs have become really good at using a lot less water even as their populations boomed, according to Sarah Porter, director of the Kyle Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. Phoenix uses way less water today despite exploding growth "It's definitely our intent to make sure we're doing exactly what we're required to do so that we don't ever run out of water," Orsborn says. Much of Buckeye's growth plan relies on taking revenues from the boom to go out and buy what would most likely be imported water from other basins to support future growth here. "We can do this in an incremental approach." "I don't think we want to shut off all of the growth trying to figure out the solution for all the growth, " Orbsorn says. For now, most of the construction is continuing because developers already had met the state requirement to prove they have a one hundred year water supply lined up. Mayor Eric Orsborn says it helps his city better plan. ![]() In Buckeye anyway, city officials welcomed the release of that Department of Water Resources analysis. Still, is Phoenix and the rest of booming central Arizona facing some sort of reckoning over growth? It's not yet clear. "For perspective, the city of Phoenix is about 518 square miles, so we have this massive footprint to grow into," Orsborn says.Īrizona's new Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, says the extreme drought on the Colorado River is one of the biggest challenges of our time. His city's master plan calls for future growth encompassing a staggering 640 square miles of open land to the south, west and north. Today it's north of 111,000, according to the city's mayor Eric Orsborn. In 2000, the population was around 6,500. Housing development after housing development is slated for construction.Ī two lane highway is being widened in the former farming town of Buckeye, at the edge of the Phoenix sprawl, to make way for an 800 home "master planned community." A sign advertises new homes coming soon with the offer of joining "the VIP interest list."Ĭity officials proudly promote Buckeye as one of America's fastest growing cities. Water gulping data centers, large warehouses and distribution centers have sprouted in the barren desert. Drive traffic-clogged Interstate 10 through Phoenix's West Valley suburbs and you'd hardly know the Southwest is as dry as it's been in 1,200 years. New homes under construction in the desert west of Phoenix.īUCKEYE, Ariz.
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