water Archives - Rogue Columnist

For whom the bell tolls

California, facing its worst drought in modern times, gets all the press. Arizona, confronting many of the same issues, albeit less severely so far, flies under the radar.

I'm told that the latest meme of is Phoenix 3.0 — 1.0 being an agricultural economy, 2.0 being development and 3.0, now, is moving into the broad, sunlit uplands of a technology economy.

This is only boosterwash. Data centers and profaning the desert with solar "farms" is far from being at the headwaters of the tech economy. Where the innovation happens on a global scale. Where the world talent congregates for high-paid jobs. This is almost exclusively happening in blue states, in a few "technopolises" such as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Boston and New York.

The headwaters of advanced industries don't go to states defined by their extreme politics, underfunded education, and cuts to universities.

The reality is that Arizona is desperately trying to restart the growth engine for one, two, maybe three more runs — with championship golf — before the edifice finally collapses. By then, the architects of the short hustle will be living off their profits somewhere else.

Jon Talton April 6, 201568

Phoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Lies, damned lies and water

Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over — old adage.

So Doug Ducey and Fred DuVal have laid out their plans for addressing a water shortage in Arizona. DuVal, naturally, comes off as the sanest, including asking the state Department of Water Resources "to develop a detailed analysis of the Groundwater Management Act and provide specific recommendations for improving the law."

That's good. I don't trust ADWR or have confidence that the law is being adequately enforced or monitored.

DuVal is less convincing when he told the Arizona Republic that the state needs to "go big" on new water projects, including desalination. As regular readers know, the feds aren't going to invest in more waterworks. California and the Upper Basin states would also resist them with all their might (see here and here).

Ducey comes off full kook, including his insinuation that trees are to blame for drought. The last thing Phoenix needs to do is further degrade its historic oasis. Central Phoenix, especially, needs more trees to offset the heat island and climate change.

But nobody dared wake the elephant. You know, the one in the room

Jon Talton September 29, 201432

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Vulnerabilities

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, built upwind from the nation's fifth-largest city and plagued for years by regulator's safety concerns. It is the only nuclear plant in the world not near a large body of water.

People move to Phoenix bragging about the lack of blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. True enough. Yet they are moving into a place burdened by its own special hazards. They're the ones your real estate agent didn't mention; the ones that what is left of journalism rarely covers. That nobody talks about them besides — I hope — emergency planners, does not make them any less dangerous. Indeed, a case could be made that Phoenix is one of the highest-risk metro areas in the nation. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Risk Index, Maricopa County is rated "relatively high." Higher than "tornado alley" in Kansas and Oklahoma.

One of the most populous metropolitan areas in the nation has been built in a hostile desert. It's isolated, with limited highways, no passenger rail and surrounded by hundreds of miles of inhospitable, waterless badlands. Evacuation in an emergency would be impossible. The closest large cities — Tucson and Las Vegas — are as vulnerable as Phoenix. Gasoline must be brought in by pipelines from refineries hundreds of miles away. Water and the electricity for air conditioning depend on complex, vulnerable systems.

This harsh reality should have been brought home earlier in this decade, when, amidst brutal August heat, a gasoline pipeline broke; a year later, a mid-summer transformer fire threatened to shut down the power grid. The gas crisis was particularly frightening. Fights broke out at filling stations. People drove around in search of a tanker truck to follow. More inquisitive residents were surprised that such a large city has no refinery and is served by only two pipelines, one from the east, one from the west, built decades ago when Phoenix held a fraction of its current population.

Jon Talton July 27, 20094

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Water and Phoenix’s rebirth

Theodore Roosevelt Dam and spillway, 1915.

On the mountain tops we stand
All the world at our command
We have opened up the soil
With our teardrops
And our toil
–Gordon Lightfoot (Canadian Railroad Trilogy)

That people can move to the Salt River Valley turn on a reliable tap or jump in a shimmering swimming pool, never even wondering where the water originates, is testimony to the mighty acts and sacrifices of previous generations.

Today's transplants would never know it, but they live in one of the world's great fertile river valleys. But unlike the Nile and Euphrates, the Salt is dangerously unpredictable. It floods. It dries up to nearly nothing. In the end, it destroyed the most advanced hydraulic civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas, which we call the Hohokam.

It very nearly did the same to the Americans who found the valley after the Civil War, having sat there empty for centuries as if providentially awaiting them. Even some of the Hohokam canals were intact, needing only to be cleaned out by the newcomers. But the river had its own harsh logic. The territorial "lifestyle," as related by my grandmother, was unbelievably primitive, even at the end of the 19th century — always dependent on the river's tricks. Phoenix might never have risen from the ashes.

Jon Talton May 28, 200910

Phoenix

Phoenix and Mesa dementia

As the Great Disruption rolls across the globe, changing everything, Arizona slips ever deeper into unreality. And that's saying something. Mesa's notoriously anti-everything voters approved — by 84 percent — using tax incentives to lure what the Republic calls "two massive upscale resort projects." Meanwhile, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is due to "outline an ambitious strategy to make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city – and the greenest – in the entire country." And what will the strategy, to be unveiled in today's State of the City speech, include? Providing bicycle rentals. Installing solar panels on city buildings. "Developing Phoenix's canal system for recreation and business use similar to the Tempe Town Lake area."

Where to begin? What's most remarkable is how Arizona is willfully ignoring three mortal perils: water, global warming and the rising possibility that it could have one of the world's failed states on its southern border. Oh, the relatively lesser perils remain as well: the growing underclass, the horrible schools, linear slums, income inequality, inadequate infrastructure, serious environmental damage and the health consequences that follow, etc. There's little realization that the props that held up the old growth machine are gone, done, over. I know: Let's build "two massive upscale resort projects!"

Jon Talton March 11, 200910

Phoenix

Dead town walking

Do even the most sober-minded Phoenicians realize how deep a hole they're in? The depression caused by the housing collapse is undeniable. So the answer is merely to reinflate the housing bubble and happy days are here again, right? More "master planned communities." More paving over Pinal and Yavapai counties and rolling over Wickenburg with lookalike tract houses. More boobs from the Midwest who will put up with anything as long as they don't have to shovel snow.

Indeed, a major effort will be made to craft the Obama stimulus to do just this. Sustainability has no powerful political base. Sprawl does. Even the nominally progressive radio talker Ed Schultz is pushing for a bailout of the house builders — and no wonder: he also owns a small construction company and drives 50 miles each way to work from his suburban home. With progressives like these, who can understand that the old sprawl model is hopelessly broken? Trying to revive it will only increase and lengthen the pain of transition — or leave the country too bankrupt to even get there. Reviving it in Arizona will only hasten the inevitable water emergency.

But Phoenix faces crises beyond the housing depression. As one of America's least literate and most poorly educated big cities — if it can even be called a city — it's not surprising that no one is talking about them. And even the "smart people" assume the growth machine will revive, simply because it always has. Call them the road kill of the Great Disruption, the new era of discontinuity.

Jon Talton January 9, 20094

Phoenix

Why Arizona can’t ‘retool’ its economy

Even under the ownership of Gannett, with a publisher whose command to the newsroom is to "say something positive about the community" and a huge loss of talent and institutional knowledge, the Arizona Republic — er, Information Center — still does its occasional "let's do the right thing" stories. The latest appeared Sunday.

This is not investigative, "put-em-in-jail" journalism. Rather, it represents a white paper on the things the "community" needs to do to get better. The Republic has been doing this at least since the 1980s, when it became clear that Phoenix was headed for a trainwreck. I certainly wrote my share. And nothing ever happens. Now I read them, as the real power brokers must do, for entertainment value.

Editors must have been on vacation to allow Chad Graham, one of the small cadre of real reporters, to write:

The Valley's economy could start to recover in 2010. That is when some economists believe the glut of excess homes will be absorbed and new residents will spark new construction.But if history is a guide, metropolitan Phoenix will only seem to rebound. Despite decades of real- estate run-ups, quality-of-life measures for the region continue to fall.

That's the truth. But, then, the paper sometimes allows such unpleasantness on its pages. After all nothing will happen. Then the usual-suspect "experts" talking about "wake-up calls" and "initiatives" for biotech or solar power. There's just one problem with all of this:

Jon Talton November 17, 20084

Phoenix

The Gateway to fresh folly in Phoenix

Here we go again.

According to the East Valley Tribune, DMB Associates has made public the plans for its part of the old GM Proving Grounds near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. But wait,

Dense, urban spaces, narrow pedestrian pathways to a nearby coffee shop
or bookstore, a short drive to work. That’s the kind of urbanism
southeast Mesa can expect in the future, if things go as planned by the
developer of 3,200 acres of property.

My friend Grady Gammage, the land-use lawyer, adds: "We’re hoping to hit the sweet spot where we embrace the 21st-century dynamic nature with something significantly urban." But then comes the story’s money shot:

To embrace its moniker of "21st-century desert urbanism," DMB would
like a flexible framework to work with, one that develops as the market
dictates over the years. Under this new type of planned district, which Mesa approved last
September, a developer gets to create a zoning ordinance for a property
and is able to get some flexibility in future development.

What’s wrong with this? Almost everything.

Jon Talton August 7, 20082

Phoenix

Phoenix and Arizona — the solutions are out there

Newer readers to Rogue Columnist might wonder about the attention I pay to my native state of Arizona, even though now I live in Seattle. First, because after I chose to leave the Arizona Republic in April 2007, I took with me a cohort of loyal readers who want something other than the usual mendacious Phoenix cheerleading (think of this as a virtual Battlestar Gallactica). But also because the challenges and troubles Arizona faces carry lessons for all of America. Finally, I fear Phoenix’s coming implosion will bring a huge pricetag for American taxpayers, and a human tragedy that shakes our souls.

Some of these readers still tell me they come away from my posts feeling depressed. I want them to realize the facts, get mad as hell and take action. But Phoenicians, even really smart ones, tend to have two emotional gears: blind optimism and suicidal depression. It’s a malady as old as settlement of the West, where promotional posters back east led to a trail of broken dreams. Others realize that the mountain Phoenix and Arizona must climb is so steep that it seems hopeless.

I spent seven years as a columnist in Phoenix offering solutions, as well as pointing out the emperor’s wardrobe malfunction (and believe me, I pulled my punches every time I wrote). But here again are some solutions. Some might apply to towns other than Phoenix.

Jon Talton July 25, 200810

Phoenix

The Coles affair: Unsustainability is now

Once again, the Wall Street Journal goes to Phoenix to report on the most pathological aspects of our economic troubles. It does the in-depth, sophisticated and contextual story on the suicide of Scott Coles and the collapse of his Mortgages Ltd. that the local press will not allow its reporters the time and expertise to do. And remember, the Republic’s in-house diktat is, "say something positive about the community" (and use streaming video!!).

The personal story of Coles is the stuff of a tragic novel, albeit for our tawdry era. He was 48 when he wrote a goodbye note, donned a tuxedo, climbed into bed, and apparently committed suicide. His company was in trouble, and with it some of the highest-profile projects in "the Valley." His 20-year-younger second wife, whom he had met in Las Vegas, wanted a trial separation. The darkness he must have felt merits our compassion and prayers.

But the business story must also be told, for it illustrates not only how Phoenix got into its worst downturn in perhaps decades, but also the peril of Ponzi Scheme Nation.

Jon Talton July 16, 20086