Emily Green's wonderful weekly post is back after a brief hiatus. Just in the nick of time, too - some of my followers were afraid I would once again post about the water travails of a certain Southwestern USA metropolis.
Actually, I could post about said travails without mentioning a certain city in Nevada, because I'm now in Scottsdale, Phoenix's wealthy neighbor. I am at the Fairmont Scottsdale for a two-day meeting sponsored by the American Society of Association Executives for volunteer leaders. I'm here because of my 'Crown Prince' status with AWRA.
Here's the draft program agenda. Impressive, eh?
A word about the Fairmont. It is so tony that, unlike cheap, tacky places such as the Holiday Inn Express, it adds assorted fees to its basic room charge, a modest conference rate of $259/night (it is Scottsdale and it is winter): housekeeping - $2; Internet - $14.99; portage - $12. The last fee is to cover baggage handling, although it specifically does not cover gratuities. When I heard 'portage', I joked to the desk clerk that I didn't have my boat. She smiled weakly. She did annoy me somewhat by implying that the charges were a bargain by stating that ASAE negotiated the housekeeping and portage fees, when in fact they are the same for everyone. But then again, there is an espresso machine in the bathroom.
Scottsdale is in the Valley of the Sun, aka the Phoenix metropolitan area, whose population is around 4.5M. It's also very dry, but that doesn't seem to impede growth at all. A friend of mine who lives here told me he heard a local planning official say that water was not a factor in land-use planning. And that my friends, is a problem in much of the USA, but it's a particularly bad policy in a desert.
For an apocalyptic vision of greater Phoenix, read this.
But back to Emily's post. It's a veritable potpourri, as it always is. Cheap water, Marcellus Shale, Las Vegas, peeing in high school, Paris, Kansas, Philadelphia, Colorado, India, San Joaquin Valley, Chicago, Georgia, Delta smelt.
Read her article. And read Shaun McKinnon's post about Urinetown: The Musical.
"It’s a privilege to pee." — A lyric from “Urinetown,” performed by Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, Waterblogged, 5 February 2010
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