Originally published at: Town's desperate search for water to fuel their real estate boom | Boing Boing
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But really, how many “can live in the beautiful desert”, even with all the conservation possible? If a community can’t expand because there’s not enough water, maybe it shouldn’t expand.
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I agree. What’s causing issues is people who move from greener pastures who don’t understand or appreciate the desert. And unless carefully designed, yards look like shit. A mix of weeds and bare dirt. Many home owners give up and lay down a layer of ugly gravel. That sprouts weeds which requires regular weed killer in a region with precious little surface water as it is.
Having a desert landscape yard has its own problems.
My mom has a professional planned desert landscape yard. According to city planners, it looks like weeds. So every few years, she get cited and has to bring out the original landscape architect drawings. Not to mention that conditions are never exactly the same as actual desert (roof runoff, microclimate, etc), so the plants and trees either over grow or die. Lately she’s hit a middle ground that requires some watering, but very little. The desert willows are beautiful in the spring.
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Build a sietch?
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I have no sympathy. I couldn’t make it past the first few seconds showing a golf course. Another recent BB thread talks of inventions that are more destructive than beneficial. Golf is surely a contender.
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Can’t say i’m surprised. St George is a decent place to visit but the vibe always struck me as odd, then again development in arid regions in other states are very much the same despite water being an issue.
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Me neither.
THIS!! In fact I’m going over there to post it!
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All that beach volleyball potential unacknowledged…
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Except for disc golf that can be played in whatever terrain you happen to have.
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Reminds me of neighborhoods I visited around Phoenix. Friends of mine who moved in decades ago were leaving, because the hills around them were covered by invasive plants people brought in from the Midwest. I’ve watched episodes of House Hunters set in AZ or NV, and was stunned at how much time, money, and water homeowners wasted on installing lawns where grass was never meant to grow.
I had to stop watching the video at the point they brought up how many golf courses these misguided people have created. 
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eh - we have plenty of water, but we still got rid of our grass, so I never have to water a lawn, and more directly I never have to mow a lawn. I finally gave away my lawn mower to a friend who does mower repairs after not using it for almost 5 years.
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The point about the pipeline is a bit misleading. St. George can’t just put a snorkel in at the Colorado River and deprive cities and farms downstream of their water. That simply does not happen in practice.
What it would let St. George do is people able to divert water it purchases from other places. They could – for instance – buy a hundred thousand acre feet from the Central Irrigation District in El Centro, CA. CID would then have to do with less, but St George could then divert that water through the pipeline.
There’s a narrower point about whether or not it makes sense to have a pipeline at all, but it’s not because St George can steal anyone else’s water. The $2.4 billion pipeline will stay dry if they don’t buy the water in a voluntary transaction,
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Well, donʻt come for the Great Lakesʻ water - just move to the area (upstate New York, Erie Pennsylvanie, northern Ohio, Michigan, etc.). So many places have plentiful water and still folks migrate into the desert and sunbelt. It makes no sense.
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Kinda, but not really-- Utah already has rights to that water:
https://water.utah.gov/interstate-streams/colorado-river/#:~:text=Utah’s%20compact%20allocation%20is%201.725,about%201%20million%20acre-feet.
For decades, Utah didn’t use up it’s share (and allowed California to drink moar to grow delicious avocados and almonds). Now, these yahoos are trying to demand “Utah’s fair share” which also ties into all sorts of nativist anti-californian rhetoric (Californians are socialists and non mormon, ya know).
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Stop trying to build shit in the desert.
Though maybe it is possible if they had super high end water recycling, like on the space station.
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I’m doing the "rain dance’ for them, right now.
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It’ll make even less sense with an additional 10 years of global warming.
Now the highs in St. George might be 108F. In 10 years it’ll be 128F.
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And strict rationing and monitoring like on the space station. You’re not letting the tap run while you brush your teeth up there. You’re barely even washing your face.
And of course there’s the way space station residents cede control to others. If ground engineers suspect there is a problem with the recycling system and it is prudent to limit use even more until spare parts can be delivered, the astronauts have no choice but to comply.
Good luck with your external water masters, St. George Utah.
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