Eric Osborne, mayor of an old farm town full of new homes, factories and warehouses, spends his days thinking about water. The engine of this growth is billions of gallons of water being pumped from the ground, and his city of Buckeye, Arizona, is squeezing even more water as builders push deep into the Phoenix desert fringe. craving.

But Arizona announced last week that it would limit some future housing construction in Buckeye and elsewhere, citing groundwater shortages. Mr. Osborne began to be bombarded with worried calls.

“My neighbors come up to me and say, ‘What are you doing?’ Did you run out of water?” said Mr Osborne. “It made our community nervous and we thought, ‘What’s going on here, do we need to move?'”

No, he tells them. breath.

The havoc was sparked by a new state study that found groundwater supplies in the Phoenix area about 4 percent short of what is needed for planned growth over the next 100 years. It may feel like a distant horizon, but it’s enough change to force the nation to rethink its future in the short and long term.

There are now pressing questions about how Arizona should use its increasingly scarce water. Water-hungry alfalfa and lettuce farms, or dry new computer chip and battery factories and coffee creamer production? Need new sprawl or more development within the city? Can the Phoenix suburbs continue to grow at its furious pace? Should I?

“No, we’re not out of business,” said Grady Gammage, former president of the Central Arizona Project, an aqueduct system that carries Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. “This can slow growth down a bit. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.”

Arizona has some of the strictest groundwater laws in the country, in more highly regulated areas like Phoenix. For decades, the state has demanded new development to prove it has 100 years of water supply before selling land or starting construction.

This projected shortage means that developers in Phoenix’s rapidly growing suburbs will be unable to obtain state approval to build new subdivisions that rely on groundwater wells, and will not be able to obtain water from elsewhere. means that you must procure

But with cities and developers in Arizona and other fast-growing Western states competing for every surplus, new water sources are limited. According to Zillow, experts say this will increase housing costs, which have already risen 51% over the past four years, and undermine Arizona’s appeal as an affordable destination for businesses and new residents. says it is possible.

“It will change the way development is done,” Gammage said. “Dense, less grass, less pool.”

Since news of groundwater shortages rocked the Phoenix area, mayors, developers, and business groups have warned anxious investors, homeowners, and potential start-ups about climate change and shrinking forests. I have tried to reassure you that Arizona still has water, despite the threat of The Colorado River begins to reshape its future.

Governor Katie Hobbs, who made Arizona’s water supply a focus in her first months in office, said the decision on groundwater will not derail projects already approved and will help most development in the metropolitan area around the Phoenix area. said it would have little impact on The state said it also has a supply of 80,000 lots that can continue to be built with building permits, even on the edge of the suburbs.

But for some residents around Buckeye, regularly ranked As one of the 10 fastest growing cities in the country, it finally felt like the deadline for overdraft payments was approaching. It marks the beginning of a new, thirstier era in which the rapidly expanding Phoenix region will be unable to continue to grow as it endlessly drains into the Sonoran Desert.

“I worry all the time,” said Trudy Han, 71, who moved to Buckeye in 1980 when the population was just 3,400. With more than 110,000 residents now, city officials say they expect: 1.5 million people The people who live there are comparable to the size of Phoenix today.

On Saturday afternoon, Han and her family huddled under umbrellas on a lot of Spanish-tiled homes bordering the endless desert, and their grandchildren playing flag football on a grassy square fed by treated wastewater. I was looking at the appearance of

Shortly before the pandemic, Innocente Cayetano moved to Buckeye, just 25 miles west of Goodyear, Arizona. The reason was that there was no need to worry about water and the prices were cheap. He said a starter home in Buckeye costs $100,000 less than in a town closer to Phoenix, so he can invest his savings in a mobile coffee trailer. Business has taken off and he has just broken ground to build a storefront location in his one of Buckeye’s more attractive master-planned communities.

“This is a little gold mine,” he said.

He believes there is enough water in the city to brew coffee and fill taps.

Buckeye’s affordability has attracted more and more Black and Latino families from California, the Midwest, and other parts of Arizona over the past 20 years. The city now has a higher percentage of Latino residents than the state of Arizona as a whole.

On the western edge of the city, the reality of limited groundwater will soon begin to emerge. Just west of the jagged White Tank Mountains, it’s the first of a new development called Terravalis, where contractors are clearing creosote bushes to build 100,000 homes and 55 million square feet of commercial space. vacated the road to the house of

The development is owned by Howard Hughes Corporation and has received approval from the State Water Authority to build 7,000 homes. But now developers of Terravalis and several other projects in the western Buckeye desert need to find other water sources in order to obtain permits to build the rest of the project.

The restriction means the city on the edge of Maricopa County, home to 4.5 million people, will have to double down on its search for new water sources. They pursue it by conserving, recycling wastewater, expanding reservoirs, and even pumping treated seawater from Mexico.

Buckeye Mayor Osborne said the city is in the final stages of purchasing $80 million worth of water from landlords in a rugged mountainous area about 40 miles west. This will add enough water to supply about 18,000 households each year over the next century. But Buckeye officials estimate they will need about 30 times that amount annually.

“It’s going to be incredibly expensive,” Osborne said.

Buckeye is also exploring various ideas, including a new wastewater treatment plant. Capture the brackish water near the bend of the Gila River, which is currently being pumped. We are working with other cities to build a taller dam to extend the reservoir in the mountains northeast of Phoenix.

Ultimately, Buckeye’s goal is to convince Arizona that there are enough water sources to merit the coveted state “designation.” A group of water users calls The “platinum standard” for water supply in the desert.

Most of the other major cities around Phoenix and Maricopa County already have these designations from the state, meaning they can continue to grow despite the halt in groundwater-based development.

“Anyone complaining about urban sprawl or lack of transportation, this change will solve all those problems,” said Benjamin Ruddell, a professor of water use at Northern Arizona University. said. “Unless you’re a land speculator trying to turn the desert into housing, this isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

Landbuyers like Anita Velma-Larian remain bullish about the future of development outside Phoenix. He said the demand for undeveloped land with a confirmed water supply has increased since the state’s announcement. Developers are looking for alternative uses for the land without the now-suspended state water permits. Vama Larian is working to convert 2,000 acres of land once intended for residential use into factories and warehouses that, like subdivisions, are not legally required to show 100 years of water supply. said he was going.

Intel and Taiwanese semiconductor companies are building new chip factories around Phoenix. At Buckeye, work is A new lithium-ion battery factory is under construction.

“There’s a lot of that happening,” Varma Larian said. “There will be more industrial development on land that used to be residential.”