For most of human history, a simple axiom for survival seemed to prevail: Don’t build houses where there is too little water. Amid dangerous droughts, Arizona officials recently enshrined that precept by limiting development in one of the country’s fastest-growing cities — a potential turning point for water policy in a region acutely threatened by climate change.
But now real estate interests have launched a dark-money legal campaign to overturn the precedent-setting regulations. Their goal: promising rent-strapped locals the American Dream of affordable homeownership in areas where officials have found there is not enough groundwater to sustain new suburban development.
Over the last decade, Phoenix has become one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, offering hundreds of thousands of new arrivals a relatively low cost of living and an influx of new tech jobs. As the population has boomed, developers have cashed in, rapidly pushing Phoenix’s notorious urban sprawl further into the desert.
It’s here — on the periphery of the Phoenix metro area — that state regulators have started cracking down on this development explosion. With regional water shortages only worsening under a historic megadrought, the local groundwater supply is even more precious and can no longer sustain the city’s planned development, officials say.
In the summer of 2023, the state of Arizona announced historic limits on development in the Phoenix area, prohibiting new development in some fast-growing Phoenix suburbs that would rely on quickly diminishing groundwater. It seemed a critical juncture for water policy in the Southwest — and a hint at the impending impacts of climate change on the desert city.
Arizona’s real estate…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
