Makes me think of Sam Kinison’s joke: “We have deserts too, we don’t live in them!”
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Still confused about what local government allowed a suburb to be built that couldn’t provide local water to its residents. Are there no state codes for that sort of thing?
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Last week, Arizona learned that its water shortages could be even worse than many residents realized.
This seems like an … odd thing to take people by surprise. How, exactly, does that sneak up on people?
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you’re talking about arizona, wild west bastion of libertarian “freedumb” and all other kinds of just plain dumb.
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Your post reminded me of this scene…
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But paper plates aren’t necessarily manufactured where you are washing your dishes.
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Where there are codes, businesses tend to find loopholes. This was pointed out before on the BBS when this community made the news last year, but I couldn’t find who posted it. Here’s an article that explains it:
The homes, located in Rio Verde Foothills—an affluent, unincorporated community in the state’s Maricopa County, were built without complying to Arizona’s usual 100-year water supply requirement.
IIRC, in situations where an area is covered by regulations (or the regulations apply to large housing projects), developers will go outside of those areas or build fewer homes to get around that. 
Home buyers now have an ever-increasing list of things they should really confirm before signing off on a purchase. We’re not only seeing stories about lack of water, but also no Internet access / cell signal, more or less property than expected, odd zoning / property access, etc. All that is on top of the usual potential pitfalls - taxes, public services, mold / stucco / leaks, neighbors, poltergeists, etc.
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Even so the problem isn’t that people who live in desert communities are using 5 gallons of water every time they do a load of dishes.
By just about any metric it is much worse for the environment as a whole to use disposable plates and cutlery than to wash dishes in a reasonably efficient dishwashing machine. Even for people who live in the desert.
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Deliberate dystopias: Uncovering our climate futures with Paolo Bacigalupi
New York Times-bestselling author Paolo Bacigalupi has built a successful career out of asking tough “what if?” questions to design future societies affected by climate change. In his latest novel, “The Water Knife”, Bacigalupi explores a not-so-distant future where Arizona is in the midst of a dust-bowl.
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Desiccated Ghost Suburb. Great band name! the logo could be a saguaro cactus.
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They’re used to not having to think about it. Tank buried in the yard, truck comes by to fill it up, the “low water level” signal is sent automatically. They’re already in the desert, didn’t notice the drought getting worse. Now the trucks have to drive much farther to fill up on water, so they get way higher bills. The unsustainability of their lifestyle has been completely abstracted away.
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Thanks. To an Australian, not knowing your town’s water supply levels is like not knowing whether or not you’re wearing pants. “Um, how could you not know…?”
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5,000 gallons a month?
We can go 4 - 5 days on 35 gallons in our RV without even trying. That’s without using public showers or toilets.
If we were to really try we could get a couple more days.
I wouldn’t want to live that way permanently but 5,000 gallons a month seems really high. Even doing one load of wash a day doesn’t come close.
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Are any of the articles pointing out that these people built there specifically so they could avoid paying taxes? These aren’t the little old lady next door, these are rich grifters who are finding out what happens when you grift.
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Subdivided McMansions are more plausible future slums than the stacks of mobile homes in Ready Player One.
Incidentally, instead of mobile homes why not go for something that is actually designed to be stacked?
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Shipping containers actually make horrible housing-by the time you’ve insulated them and put in a floor and so on they have almost no head space or open floor.
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The funny part of this drought situation is that farms in the southwest aren’t being penalized or charged more for the water they consume. Growing lettuce and other water heavy crops in the desert shouldn’t be allowed imo.
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Yeah. It’s going to be trouble but alfalfa farming in the desert has to stop. It should never have started. And not just river water either- using ground water for such an unsuitable crop needs to end as well.
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Maybe this is how the Fremen got started in the first place.
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I remember a geography professor talking about this. More specifically, it was iceberg lettuce, with less nutritional value than other lettuces.
And that was in 1990…
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