Phoenix Runs Out of Water

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Phoenix Runs Out of Water

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It was only a matter of time before the rapid growth of Phoenix collided with its low water supply. In 2012, Phoenix had 3.8 million residents. Last year, it had almost 4.7 million. The number is expected to continue to increase quickly. In the meantime, Phoenix averages only nine inches of rain a year, and much of its water comes from the Colorado River, which is drying up. (See why Phoenix is one of the most romantic cities in America.)
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The City of Phoenix says it has enough water. However, city management says it is important to conserve water as a part of the lifestyle of residents. New information shows that is not nearly enough.
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According to CNBC, “Developers planning to build homes in the desert west of Phoenix don’t have enough groundwater supplies to move forward with their plans, a state modeling report found.” The location gets water from the same places Phoenix does.

The challenge developers have is that they must show that the place where they want to build homes has 100 years’ worth of water supply in the ground. It is absurd to believe that a forecast that stretches out that long can be accurate.
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What is accurate is that the areas around Phoenix, including many where its water supply comes from, are amidst a multi-century drought. Experts say the last time the water situation was this bad stretches back 1,200 years.
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Developers in Phoenix continue to try to make money from new homes. The rise in population makes their success probable. However, that success may not last long. They need to get those houses up in a few years, or perhaps even sooner, as Phoenix is running out of water.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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