Comment by imzadi
4 days ago
I live here and we are definitely looking toward impending water shortages, and no one care at all. Nestle is in the process of building a 200 acre coffee creamer factory. The major flower delivery services grow their flowers here. We have tons of cotton and alfalfa fields. There are 100s of golf courses and in the wealthier areas everyone has a lush green lawn.
Sounds like a resource that isn't appropriately priced
They sold land rights to the Saudis who then siphoned off the water (now revoked said rights).
"[The Saudis] used sprinklers to grow alfalfa in La Paz County and exports it to feed dairy cattle in Saudi Arabia. The company did not pay for the water it used under the old agreement."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizo...
Water rights in the western US are mercenary. There's a healthy market in prior appropriation rights.
Just because people don't like what the water is used for doesn't mean the water isn't priced appropriately. You'll still get farmers growing thirsty / pricey crops in the desert if it covers the cost of irrigation.
We pay about $130/mo for water in north phoenix even if we don't use a drop.
That's nuts. Is that just the customer fee?
priced -> rationed
in capitalism, prices are literally how rationing happens. the theory is that it distributes the resources to those who can make them most productive. here, theoretically the water will be used more productively by chipmakers than by farmers, so the chipmakers will be able to out-bid the farmers and the water will be allocated to them. this is the "invisible hand" of the free market.
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