Phoenix is a city built on, and surrounded by, a desert. That means water and where it comes from is of primary importance. It's not as if their is an overabundance of it in the Valley of the Sun. Now, the current drought will complicate Phoenix' already difficult water situation.
Drought will force the Valley's largest water provider to reduce deliveries next year by one-third, leaving many cities to rely more heavily on costlier Colorado River water while others tap deeper into the state's already tight groundwater supplies.
No water shortages or mandatory restrictions are expected, but Phoenix immediately asked its employees to cut water use by 5 percent on city property, a move that will mean shutting off decorative fountains and adjusting irrigation schedules at city parks.
Salt River Project officials say record-dry conditions on the Salt and Verde rivers left them no choice but to trim allocations for 2003. Even with the cutback, the utility will have to dip into its own groundwater reserves to meet demand and will likely purchase as much as 250,000 acre-feet of water from the Central Arizona Project, about one-fourth the amount of water SRP delivers in a normal year.
Water, and the logisitics that surround getting it to cities in this desert, is the axis around which the Valley of the Sun revolves. You don't just build a city in the middle of a desert without making certain that you have access to water. Circumstances such as the current drought really serve to illustrate this. While it would be easy for outsiders like myself to joke about the difficulty of determining when a desert is having a drought, there really is nothing funny about it.
