On a planet that is 2/3 water, I think we can find a solution. Desalination comes to mind. We built an interstate highway system. We can build an interstate water distribution system for desalinated Pacific Ocean water.
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The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
21–30 of 200 posts
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#22The final quote is chilling: “We got two great offers in, and neither of them cared about the water situation. They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” We'll see what happens in 2023, when Scottsdale no longer sells water to the water haulers. The Water Knife feels more and more prophetic.
Eh, it's the same logic when people move to coastal areas that will be impacted by sea level rise. No one can imagine they'll be the ones who get screwed over, and certainly not if they're wealthy. As such, I'm not sure I would call it chilling so much as entirely predictable. The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place.
> The real failure is in the states and municipalities that are approving the building in the first place.
They are solving today’s problems. The fact that our lifestyles are not even sustainable even ignoring global warming, but just from an infrastructure perspective is never addressed.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#23On a planet that is 2/3 water, I think we can find a solution. Desalination comes to mind. We built an interstate highway system. We can build an interstate water distribution system for desalinated Pacific Ocean water.
That, and I expect we'll see growing demand for geoengineering solutions to bring more rainfall.
Entrenched money interests won't just accept the situation, they'll fight with every plausible tool, for better or worse.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#24I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to h…
>I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this? It's pretty normal in rural areas to basically not have a fire department for all practical…
Right, but even with a volunteer fire department, at least there's normally water that they can use to save the neighbor houses once they arrive on-scene. If there's no water then there's no way to save anything from a fire.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#25I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to h…
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Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#26this isn’t really the suburbs. it’s a more rural area with water wells and not hooked up to the main water service
new suburb developments in az are required to prove they have a 100 year water supply
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#27On a planet that is 2/3 water, I think we can find a solution. Desalination comes to mind. We built an interstate highway system. We can build an interstate water distribution system for desalinated Pacific Ocean water.
No post body was provided.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#28I can't find it anymore but I read a long form article like this probably 10 years ago on the problem of suburbs public infrastructure. Basically they ran the numbers and figured out that more than 50% of cities simply cannot afford to maintain the suburb infrastructure no matter what they do with the budget. Even if they did something crazy like tripled taxes tomorrow they still could not afford it. The called them…
I too want to find this article (I'm certain it was linked from HN). It isn't a strong towns article, but it had some great diagrams showing how the city centers are the only economically viable places for utilities because of density. The suburbs were just not cost effective and thus were going to go bankrupt because of the lack of efficiency. I've tried to find this article in the past and it has been long enough that I'm not really sure what to google for at this point.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#29This was an interesting read for me.
I have a cabin on some land near Joshua Tree. There's water in the ground (300-400ft down) but I haven't bothered to put in a well, instead just hauling what little I need from the nearby town's bulk water dispenser.
Unlike AZ apparently, CA doesn't allow any new construction without a secure and sufficient water supply. Installing new cisterns for receiving hauled water is no longer permitted, but existing cisterns are grandfathered in. It seems like they never make any exceptions. A nearby fire station permanently closed when their well water was found to be too toxic and they weren't permitted to install a cistern for hauled water.
It seems like AZ could solve this issue state-wide by adopting a similar permitting requirement, instead of having these parcels-of-5 loopholes enabling entire subdivisions to be built without water.
The problems my area has been dealing with are illegal agriculture (large marijuana grows) depleting the ground water, and there's always some hare-brained commercial plan trying to plow through the red-tape and resell the cheap but finite groundwater in one form or another.
Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs
#30I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to h…
they said it's because there's no HOA. HOAs really are incredibly awful. And, it's getting harder and harder to find houses that are not in an HOA.