House being built on January 7, 2023 in the Rio Verde foothills, Arizona, US.
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Developers planning to build homes west of Phoenix, Arizona, do not have enough groundwater supplies to move forward with their plans, a State Modeling Report found.
According to the report, plans to build homes west of the White Tank Mountains will require alternative sources of water, as the state is battling a historic megadraft and water shortage.
Dwindling water resources throughout the western US and increasing restrictions on the Colorado River are affecting all sectors of the economy, including home construction. But amid a nationwide housing shortage, Developers are bombing Arizona With plans to build houses even when the water shortage worsens.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources reports that the Lower Hassyampa sub-basin, which includes the valley far west of Phoenix, is projected to have a total unmet water demand of 4.4 million acre-feet over a 100-year period. Hence the department cannot sanction development of subdivisions, depending only on ground water.
“We must talk about the challenge of our time: Arizona’s decades-long drought on Colorado River use, and the combined effects on our water supply, our forests and our communities,” Governor Katie Hobbs said in a statement Last week.
Developers in the Phoenix area are required to obtain state certificates certifying that they have a 100-year water supply in the land they are building on before they can build any property. be approved for.
Megasoothe makes two decades driest in West at least 1,200 years, and human-caused climate change has exacerbated the conditions. Arizona has experienced reductions in its Colorado River water allocation and must now curb 21% of its water use from the river, or about 592,000-acre-feet each year, an amount that would supply more than 2 million Arizonans. houses annual.
Despite warnings that the development does not have enough water to sustain growth, some Arizona developers have argued that the water supply is not a problem, saying that the new homes are equipped with low-flow fixtures, drip irrigation, desert landscaping and There will be other drought-friendly measures. , There are more than two dozen housing developments underway around Phoenix.