Phoenix represents perhaps the most audacious bet in American urban planning - building a metropolitan area of 1.6 million people in the middle of one of the nation's harshest deserts. "We're sitting in the middle of the desert, trying to grow a city.
Which defies logic, for many people," Cynthia Campbell, the city's water resource management adviser, told the Phoenix New Times. This frank admission reveals the fundamental challenge facing Arizona's capital.
Officials in Phoenix, the state's capital and largest city, know the day is coming when they can no longer rely on the Colorado River for 40 percent of their water needs. And that's just one water issue the city of 1.6 million is grappling with.
The city depends heavily on the Salt River system, which provides about 60% of the Phoenix metro area's water needs, but this source faces its own climate-related threats. The situation becomes even more dire when considering long-term projections.
It is a tributary of the Gila River, and both face climate change impacts. "They could be affected by a mega-drought," Andrew Ross, a sociology professor at New York University and author of Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable The city's water managers are implementing increasingly desperate measures, but the fundamental math remains unchanged: you can't sustain rapid population growth in the desert without adequate water supplies.
The Desert City's Dangerous Gamble
版主： 牛河梁
