By Sarah Porter and Kathryn Sorensen
This is now the nation’s fifth most populous city, and it’s unlikely to stop growing soon. People come to the Valley of the Sun in search of sunshine and opportunity. Accompanying this influx are media narratives that the region is doomed to run out of water. Some seem almost to be rooting for an existential water crisis.
This is odd. Phoenix residents may love to tease people enduring cold gray winters in other parts of the country, but no one here wants to see rising oceans swamp East Coast cities or hurricanes wipe out communities along the Gulf of Mexico. The idea that Phoenix will run out of water is more than odd, it’s wrong.
Arizona uses roughly the same amount of water today as it did in the 1950s, though the state’s population is more than seven times as large and its economy is more than 15 times as large. Water demand is more dependent on land use than on population growth. In Arizona’s arid climate, crops can consume six times as much water as subdivisions. As Phoenix’s urban sprawl turned former farmlands into developments, water demand declined even while population increased.
