The international news that Rio Verde Foothills has seen its water cut off by the city of Scottsdale is a drama in miniature for how the Arizona Ponzi scheme is going to play out on a larger stage in the coming years.
From the BBC and New York Times, to the Washington Post and local media, Rio Verde Foothills is invariably described as a "town," "suburb," or using typical sales language, "community." The Times even gave "Rio Verde" its own dateline.
In fact, it is a subdivision in the desert of about 2,000 houses ("homes" is sales language) north of Scottsdale. It's a wildcat subdivision, built by several developers who never had to comply with the Groundwater Act, with a "100 year guarantee" of water (itself an elaborate hoax).
As I've warned you for years, the developers are gone to more hospitable climes, leaving the foolhardy owners of these houses holding the bag.
I'm old enough to remember when Scottsdale received most of its water from the city of Phoenix. But that was when "the West's Most Western Town" barely stretched as far north as McDonald Drive. Like most of the city and suburbs, it was safely nestled in the footprint of the Salt River Project and its renewable water.
Now, Scottsdale stretches north to the Tonto National Forest. It depends on increasingly undependable Colorado River water (40% of metropolitan Phoenix also depends on the CAP).
These are the wages of population overshoot, climate change, and the greed of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. Rio Verde Foothills is only the first unsustainable domino to fall.
Discuss.
No surprise to this Desert rat
after 73 years in the
Great Sonoran Desert.
Whats left if it!
I aquired a home on Wheels 32 years ago.
Two words for the fools who bought out there.
CAVEAT EMPTOR
Beautiful desert vistas? Bullshit.
Want to know what was meant to live out there? Rattlesnakes and javelina.
What do we call desert vistas without water in AZ….Boot Hill.
Boot Hill…with championship golf!
I’m not sure I understand the Rio Verde situation. I just looked up the current Rio Verde home asking prices on Zillow. They range from $445,000 to $1.85 million.
The people of more modest means in communities like Mayer and Wilhoit organized non-profit water companies, dug wells, and built water distribution systems, but the well-to-do of Rio Verde did not? And they want everyone to feel sorry for them? Are they prohibited by law from digging wells?
I know this doesn’t take in the bigger issue of overpopulation and poor planning, but these are questions that I haven’t seen asked or answered in the media.
And like so many “freedom loving Americans,” they moved out there largely because there were no infringements by gubmint on their “rights.” Now if only the government would save them…just like the fools who bought property east of Tonto Creek in Tonto Basin and periodically have to be fished out of the creek when trying to ford at flood stage, if not recovering their bodies. Now I saw there is going to be a $20 million bridge built by gubmint for the few hundred dummies. Zero sympathy for these folks, God bless America…
Kevin and Doggie,
A number of years ago, the wife and I took a drive out to Rio Verde. As we were on the long downgrade towards the Verde River, we passed about five adults who were dangling and playing with a four to five foot pissed off rattlesnake. Little did I know at the time I was looking at some of the smarter residents of Rio Verde. (Insert sarcasm here)
“they moved out there largely because there were no infringements by gubmint on their “rights”…
Also, to get away from poor people and minorities. Perhaps one of them will stop by and offer a contrasting opinion.
There will be a time when these sorts of thing are happening in places like Buckeye and Queen Creek. Water will end up being the growth boundaries that were batted around in the mid-2k’s but never happened. If the state allows Buckeye to build west of the white tanks based on ground water and overoptimistic CAP projections look for this to happen on the scale of hundreds of thousands of people
Rust belters in paradise.
I have very little sympathy for the Rio Verde fools who either didn’t pay attention to the looming threat for the past decade or actively fought against creating an actual solution due to the general notion of “government bad”.
I have some sympathy for the hypothetical resident who was just completely oblivious to the fact that Scottsdale was going to shut them off at some point, if such a person exists.
This whole situation has been an interesting (read: dreadful) look at how easily the media can spin the narrative. The majority of the coverage I’ve seen paints the people of Rio Verde as helpless victims facing the wrath of an oppressive bully mayor.
I don’t know if I’ve ever said this before or will ever say this again, but I’m with Scottsdale on this one. You moved to an unincorporated community with no utilities, it’s nobody’s fault but your own if you can’t secure water anymore because it needs to be shipped in from somewhere further away than Scottsdale.
Scottsdale is in an enviable position in one of the hottest and driest regions on planet Earth. There’s a fungible commodity called water and it’s likely they can write the check payable to Arizona’s harshest mistress.
The wildcat subdivision to its north has no real cards to play except for the relative prosperity of its own residents. The shoe waiting to drop is a worsening drought that wishful thinking, sadly, cannot fix. Someday, somehow, nature will always prevail. Too many humans? There’s a plan for that. Just you wait and see.
Someone had to push the dominoes over and Scottsdale can pay for its own Reality Principle. Other places will definitely suck by contrast. You wondered what how this epic saga was going to end? Nicely for the rich and poorly for Arizona’s dehydrating masses.
Wasicu kemosabe
The Campfire.
“I used to like this town.
There were open ditches full of water
Tree lined streets with Cottonwoods.
Now gone but some clinging residue.
Two lane roads replaced with 5 lane asphalt and concrete speedways and
Attempts at imitating LA.
High rises and high rents
No tents
For the tuberculosis.
Rampant Crime
Drugs now more than a dime.
White collar crime.
Not gone underground
Just ignored
And now comes the herds
Fleeing the disasters of environmental catastrophes.
Foreign license plates invading the Great Sonoran Desert.
My Campfire dims.
Time to leave.
Its Phoenixville, Jake!
I’ve only lived in Arizona full time for 40 years, so my history with the water situation is not as long as some of you here. The population of the Phoenix metro was about 1.7 million when I moved here permanently, and it is now over 5 million and still rising. I generally agree with what has been said. My only additional take is that somehow the developers are going to prevail and the building will continue until we literally have the taps run dry in major cities, not just outlying unincoproated areas like Rio Verde. The developers and their sycophants are not concerned about the long term and unless and until Arizona voters wake up to the fact that we have millions of people in a desert with limited water, ever growing heat from all the concrete and paving, and climate change, nothing is going to change. I’m not holding my breath waiting.
Motorhome. Fithwheels, and travel trailer sales continue to increase.
I once met a Retired State of Washington Iron Worker that drive to Nogales and put his motorhome on a rail road car to a Mexico seaport where he loaded it onto a barge to Belize.
Glad Jon used “houses” instead of “homes.” That’s been a point of contention for me for a long time. “Home for sale” signs are particularly loathsome.
Supply and demand is not something to become hysterical about. Sure, sometimes supplies become more scarce. That doesn’t imply unsustainability. Humans adapt, they always have. This is a nothingburger.
Housing may be a “nothing burger”
however “resources” are finite.
8 billon and counting.
Your local realtor
Tom Malthus
However
i hear “theres a great planet next door”
Elon (big) EE Cummings
HOUSING
If Musk builds a house on Mars will he be Mars first Illegal Alien?
Human Migrations will only cease when Humans cease to exist.
Water runs out.
Alfalfa runs out.
Cows run out.
NOW, you have a nothing burger.
Would you like to make that a Meal Deal?
Important to note. The Rio Verde “wildcater’s” are not out of water. They are out of the low priced water that Scottsdale previously supplied. The water haulers now have to obtain their water from a greater distance, which contributes to the higher cost to residents..
It is well known that there is a Constitutional Right to Unlimited Subsidized Cheap Water in the Developer’s Clause to the Constitution. Or at least that’s what they’re selling.
“I’m not sure I understand the Rio Verde situation.” I’m sure I don’t. After reading Jon’s post I know a lot more than I did before.
A desalination plant in Mexico will not solve diddly. To expensive. Uses huge amounts of power.
Not even as realistic as soylent green factories.
Technology sucks.
Cal Luddite
393 square miles size of Buckeye, the 303 Corridor, would love to read your take.
Hagermans plan to rob the Sea of Cortez?
What is it about humans that can’t imagine
LESS?
How about no more housing construction?
How about limiting commercial and industrial construction?
How about increasing federal lands and more Roadless areas?
How about eliminating domestic animal grazing rights?
How about increasing fees for National and State parks?
How about stopping mining operations?
Yeah, I know about as ridiculous as asking
the Musk folks to stop having kids?
Doing my part.
For the past 18 months I have been performing the proven
Swedish Death Cleaning exercise.
My 320 square foot RV HOME has lost weight, as I give away my book collection and old Tshirts and Levi’s.
My RV HOME’s gas bill you ask?
Minimal as my 20 year old RV only has 7000 miles logged.
I do realize giving up that 3000 square foot house is tough. Except when that August AC bill comes due.
You all keep drinking the developer scams.
As my Mojado amigos in los campos named me back in 1959.
Yours truly
Gringo Pata Salado
Fake news?
Rio Verde is buying Fake Snow machines.
Read till the end. This comment IS water related.
Do we really want our national leaders to be conducting exorcisms in their homes? Isn’t that so, so two centuries ago.
Didn’t Nancy realize that if the priest had accidently splashed water on her she would have gone the way of the other wicked witch of the West. In a puddle of water.
**************
You know, with the GOP being the party of anger, I read the news and all I do is get angry. The party may be on to something?
I had to look up Rio Verde on a map when this story started popping up several years ago; Scottsdale’s decision wasn’t some midnight- hour ploy. I was mildly astounded that it had been built without a reliable water source.
But it was not that much of a surprise. When I followed the AZ political coverage last year, I thought the top issue would be how to deal with the Colorado River drying up, but it was never discussed. Now AZ (and the other Basin states) won’t meet the Tuesday deadline for agreeing on allocation cuts, and will instead start whining about the loathsome Feds trying to run/ruin their lives.
HOHOKAM
They soon forgot his works;
they waited not for his counsel:
But lusted exceedingly in the Wilderness, and tempted God in the Desert.
And he gave them their request;
But sent leaness into their souls.
Psalms 106: 13-15
I’m in Tucson, after first arriving in Phoenix in 1959. If we can just keep the pirates out of Benson, repair the San Pedro and let the monsoons finish knocking out Trump’s folly, we’ll have a chance of surviving. We’ll look after our own water – just don’t try and annex anything. If you want to come down here, I recommend investing in ‘Rio Rico’ – its water is owned by a company out of Ontario. Ontario, Canada. Pretty risky, but that’s your choice – after all it’s so quiet and peaceful and so separate from the hub-bub of big city life in Nogales.
GWPDA
KILLING THE HIDDEN WATERS
by Charles Bowden ?
Who were the Developers of Rio Verde Foothills? Who owed Rio Verde Foothills Development Group, LLC. Because they are not listed with Arizona Corporation Commission (that includes LLC’s)and cannot be found online.