![]() “Do we want to grow houses or crops?” he asks. Now the valley is dominated by mega-farms growing winter vegetables for export and thirsty alfalfa for the cattle feed market. Twenty years ago, when he moved here, his house looked out on to citrus groves and flower farms. “Climate change is having an impact but that’s a controversial, unsettled issue in the western US.” ‘Sprawl is the norm’Īs a hummingbird flitted to a shrub near Holway’s swimming pool – Phoenix from above is a blue mosaic of back-garden pools – Holway explained that the Valley of the Sun may have to choose between agriculture and further urbanisation. “There’s an enormous fight over all this,” says Jim Holway, vice president of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District. Nor has the state government decided its official drought contingency proposal. The Microsoft founder recently invested $80m (£57m) in a development firm that aims to construct 80,000 new homes on undeveloped land west of Phoenix, and a new freeway all the way to Las Vegas.Īnd yet despite the federal Bureau of Reclamation reporting in 2012 that droughts of five or more years would happen every decade over the next 50 years, greater Phoenix has not declared any water restrictions. ![]() One of those plans is Bill Gates’s new “smart city”. It’s the urban bullseye for global warming in north America.” “The Phoenix metro area is on the cusp of being dangerously overextended. ![]() “There are plans for substantial further growth and there just isn’t the water to support that,” says climate researcher Jonathan Overpeck, who co-authored a 2017 report that linked declining flows in the Colorado river to climate change. The area is still growing – and is dangerously overstretched, experts warn. But it is a modern shrine to towering concrete, and gives way to endless sprawl that stretches up to 35 miles away to places like Anthem. Phoenix and its surrounding area is known as the Valley of the Sun, and downtown Phoenix – which in 2017 overtook Philadelphia as America’s fifth-largest city – is easily walkable, with restaurants, bars and an evening buzz. The “ heat island” effect keeps temperatures in Phoenix above 37C (98F) at night in summer. Last month, the US government calculated that two thirds of Arizona is currently facing severe to extreme drought last summer 50 flights were grounded at Phoenix airport because the heat – which hit 47C (116F) – made the air too thin to take off safely. This winter, snow in the Rocky Mountains, which feeds the Colorado, was 70% lower than average. Anthem’s private developer paid a local Native American tribe to lease some of its historic water rights, and pipes its water from the nearby Lake Pleasant reservoir – also filled by the Colorado. Phoenix gets less than eight inches of rainfall each year most of the water supply for central and southern Arizona is pumped from Lake Mead, fed by the Colorado river over 300 miles away. But the lush vegetation and ponds do not occur naturally. To look around Anthem would be to imagine there is no such thing as a water shortage. Twenty years ago, Anthem sprung out of virgin desert, a community “masterplanned” from scratch with schools, shops, restaurants and spacious homes – many behind high walls and electronic gates – and its own country club and golf course. Climate change is having an impact but that’s a controversial, unsettled issue in the western US It’s part of a giant conurbation of satellite towns surrounding Phoenix, and is a classic example of why this metropolitan – or “megapolitan” – area is tempting fate. The Afshars live in the squeaky-clean suburb of Anthem, Arizona.
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