Why 5 Million People Live in America’s Hottest City

Phoenix is one of America's and the world's most peculiar large cities today if you arrive in the city during the summer when the temperature is routinely higher than 100° fenit you'll be simultaneously struck with a sense of wonder and confusion as to how and why so many people have managed to live here in this objectively hostile environment and just like a city you settle in Sid Meer civilization during the late game in an undesirable area that nobody's picked yet Phoenix is one of the real world's most recently settled major cities only a little more than 80 years ago now back in 1940 Phoenix was still a fairly small sleepy town in Arizona with just a tad more than 65,000 residents it didn't even rank in the top one 100 largest US cities back then and it barely even registered as a blip in the general consciousness of most Americans let alone the rest of the world the town had only been initially settled a bit more than 70 years before 1940 back in 1867 which means that the time between Phoenix being initially settled and growing into this small town of 65,000 is about the same length of time as from 1940 to today but over Phoenix's second time period of 80 years from 1940 to today over the span of just a single lifetime Phoenix evolved from that small Dusty town in the desert that nobody had ever heard of into a sprawling Urban Metropolis home to nearly 5 million people that ranks as the fifth largest city in all of America now having surpassed the city limits population of Philadelphia in 2020 to clinch its position in the top five biggest US cities in terms of City Limits population in America Phoenix is now only overshadowed by the likes of Houston Chicago Los Angeles and New York and it's still growing at a faster Pace than any of those other larger cities Phoenix has since become one of the most quintessential examples of American suburban sprawl with seemingly endless rows of single family homes spilling out beyond the urban core into the surrounding flat desert landscape by 2007 roughly one acre of desert land around Phoenix was being developed in a residential real estate every single hour and Phoenix is still one of the top 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country in the 2020s As Americans from all across the rest of the country are being pulled to the region for Arizona's low taxes relatively low cost of living compared to States like California Phoenix's booming economy and plentiful jobs the year- round sunshine and the Beautiful winners but hardly anyone back in the early 20th century back when Phoenix was still just that small Dusty town could have ever predicted this meteoric rise over the span of the eight decades that followed after 1940 because Phoenix exists within a geographically unlikely place for such a massive Urban population to have ever Arisen in it's in the middle of a valley within the hot and arid Sonoran Desert that lacks major nearby Water Resources the hila River a tributary of the much larger Colorado River passes through the area but it's flow is very small at only about 7 cubic meters per second on average which is only about a tenth of the flow of the Rio Grand that runs through New Mexico and forms the border between Texas and Mexico the hila river is more of a stream in comparison so Humanity had to spend decades AES inefficiently diverting more and more water to the area from elsewhere to continue fueling and sustaining all of the growth in Phoenix today you'll see a landscape that's dotted with lush green golf courses farms and swimming pools cast against a backdrop of dry deserts and rocks that surround them it probably won't come as a surprise to you then that despite having less than half of the population of New York City today the Phoenix metropolitan area consumes more than twice the amount of water as New York does and in the age of climate change Phoenix's future water supply in habitability are Each Coming increasingly into open question now this last summer in 2023 broke the all-time record in Phoenix's history for the highest number of days to reach more than 110° F or 43° C 54 solid days of them while one of those days broke the all-time high single day record in the city of 113° f or 45° C 2023 was Phoenix's hottest year ever on record after breaking the previous record that was only set in 2021 and the previous record before that that was only set in 2020 and as the temperatures in Phoenix are increasing the city's precious Water Supplies are also beginning to decrease with cuts already being made of both of Arizona's primary water sources the Colorado River in the state's own groundwater while Phoenix announced just last year that for the first time ever they'll be freezing certain new residential building permits over a concern of the area's diminishing water supply there is a real fear emerging that this could be the beginning of the end of Phoenix's past 80 years worth of explosive and Limitless Suburban growth across the desert and that the chickens are finally coming home to roost and Phoenix piggy Hill herself probably summed up the cultural attitude towards Phoenix best during this episode of King the hill after stepping outside in the city during a 111° f day this city should not exist it is a monument to man's arrogance the wisdom of having established a nearly 5 million person metropolitan area in the middle of the sonor in desert is being criticized louder with every passing year and the next 80 years of Phoenix's history are shaping up to look very different than how the past 80 years went and in order to understand where the city is going if this is all really the end of Phoenix as we know it and how Phoenix managed to get so huge in spite of its desert environment it became the so-called Monument to man's arrogance in the first place it helps to begin with how Phoenix and Arizona all came to be in the first place modern Arizona and the valley where Phoenix would one day arise in was parsely inhabited by indigenous Americans for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans the pre Colombian hokom people inhabited the area in the valley for nearly a thousand years and were the first to recognize the area's potential for agriculture despite its Aid environment they developed a series of complex canals around the hila and salt rivers in the area that made agriculture possible before mysteriously disappearing sometime around 1450 it wasn't too long after that that the first Europeans began to arrive in the area in the 16th century and then all of modern day Arizona and the rest of to the American southwest steadily fell under the control of the colonial Spanish Empire and was later inherited by the independent state of Mexico in the 19th century but the modern American southwest was always a sparsely populated Fringe territory on the frontiers of their empire by the 1840s only about 80,000 people lived across all of the Mexican territories that would eventually become Arizona New Mexico California Nevada Utah and Colorado and three4 of all of them just lived in modern day New Mexico in 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico and conquered all of these lands and then purchased have been more land in Southern Arizona New Mexico with a gadston purchase in 1854 which was the event that brought all of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico both under American control Arizona and New Mexico were then each born as effectively twin territories of the United States that have always ever since made up the geographic core of the American southwest region both have very comparable Geographic sizes and shapes and both have very similar climates and topographies and both would be jointly admitted into the Union as the final states in the Continental us at about the same time in 1912 New Mexico in January of that year in Arizona the following month in February despite their similarities however both States would end up having radically different demographic Destinies across the 20th and 21st Centuries with Arizona's current population in 2024 estimated to be at about 7.5 million people and New Mexico is lagging far behind it at only a bit more than 2.1 million people but interestingly back at the time in 1912 New Mexico was the one who entered as a state with the larger population remember that 34s of the Mexicans who lived across all of this territory that would be conquered by the United States in 1846 all just lived in modern-day New Mexico which is part of why this territory in state became called New Mexico in the first place in 1912 New Mexico entered the United States with a population of 338,000 people compared to Arizona's meager 277,000 people and New Mexico would continue remaining the more populous of the two for decades until after the second world war when Arizona and Phoenix would each begin their era of Rapid runaway explosive growth they would quickly Eclipse New Mexico's growth in the process but even before Arizona's rapid population boom began in the second half of the 20th century the seeds were already being swn for the state's current debilitating Water Crisis in 1862 before Phoenix was even settled the United States federal government passed the first of the Homestead Acts designed to encourage settlers to begin colonizing and inhabiting the newly acquired desolate and empty west of the country the ACT promised any settler who Moved West 160 Acres of free land if they agreed to live on the land for a period of at least 5 years and improve it through cultivation even more land was offered up to settlers later at a lower price if the settlers agreed to begin farming it 10% of all the land in the entire United States was given away to Western settlers for free under these acts but in the aid Southwest of the country in Southern California and in the Arizona New Mexico territories where water was sced years and where irrigation infrastructure hardly existed the ability for settlers to actually farm and cultivate the land provided to them proved very difficult to try and resolve this issue in 1902 the United States federal government then passed the Reclamation Act which was designed to fund extensive irrigation projects all across the American West to supposedly reclaim the land there for agriculture and civilization the plan was for the government to sell land in the west and then use the proceeds from that land to fund the irrigation projects that would better the land and increase the land's value enabling them to continue selling the land for ever higher prices and enabling them to fund more and more grandiose irrigation projects as time went on virtually every major river in the American West was damned under this act and the largest Western River the Colorado River was extensively damned and irrigated with two of the most notable projects the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon Dam curring America's first and second largest artificial water reservoirs Lake me between Arizona and Nevada and Lake Pal between Arizona and Utah massive reservoirs in the desert like these were created and rivers were diverted artificially bringing abundant Water Supplies to Western settlers farms and so with her free or cheap land in a year round warm climate that enabled a longer growing season than in the rest of the country and backed up with subsidized low federal price guarantees on their water supply the early farmers in Arizona and the rest of the Southwest did what anyone else in their position would do and simply began growing crops and raising livestock that required warm climates and high amounts of water like citrus cotton nuts and falfa to feed their growing herds of cattle and dairy products with little care as to where the water was actually coming from this is why still today in the 2020s agriculture continues to be a booming business across the American southwest and why whopping 72% of Arizona's water consumption in 2024 is still devoted to the state's agricultural sector but establishing vast commercial farming Enterprises across the Southwest deserts wasn't the only short-sighted decision that the early planners in the American southwest made in 1922 the seven states that share the Colorado River Basin area came together to negotiate what would become known as the Colorado River compact regulating all of their access to the river's water the Colorado is by far the largest river that can be found in the American southwest with a water discharge rate that's comparable to the Hudson running through New York and that has more than nine times the water discharge rate of the Rio Grand that begins in New Mexico and flows along the Mexico Texas border the Colorado River is fed by the huge amount of snow melt up in the Rocky Mountains that then flow Southwest towards the rivers Delta in the sea of Cortez with the Watershed extending across Colorado Wyoming Utah New Mexico Arizona Nevada and Southern California the 1922 compact between these seven states estimated that the average annual flow through the river was approximately 16.4 million acre feet of water an acre foot being a unit of measurement that imagines an acre of land covered by one foot of water essentially an American football field that's covered with one foot of water the compact then allotted 7.5 million acre feet of water per year from the Colorado River to the upper four states and an equal 7.5 million acre feet of water per year allotted to the lower three states divided 58.7% of California 37.3% of Arizona and just 4% to Nevada while the remaining 1 and A2 million acre feet of water per year was allotted to Mexico furthest Downstream with New Mexico's annual allotment from the Colorado River in the upper Basin States coming out to just 11.25% or 0.84 million acre feet of water a year they were entitled to significantly less water from the Colorado River than Arizona was who got 37.3% of the lower Basin State Supply which came out to 2.8 million acre feet of water a year more than three times the amount of water as New Mexico got from the river and another part of the reason why Arizona's population took off way more than New Mexico's everever did but a major problem with this 1922 compact was that it grossly overestimated the actual usual flows of water through the Colorado out a river their estimate for 16.5 million acre feet of water a year through the river was based on only limited studies of the river between just 1905 in 1922 a period that many environmental scientists now believe included abnormally high levels of precipitation in the area that abnormally increase the river's flow higher than usual current estimates of the river's true average flow with more than a Century's worth of data suggest something more like 13.2 million ACR feet of water a year is the true historical average which means that for decades now the seven compact states in Mexico have been pulling more water out from the river and its artificial reservoirs like Lake me and Lake Pal than can be actually naturally replaced and this issue of locked in overuse on the river has so far never been significantly amended moreover legal water rights in the western us were created very differently than in the eastern US in the wetter eastern US legal water rights are based around the reparan doctrine where anybody who owns land on a body of water like a river enjoys an equal and reasonable use of the water in the trior western us where water is much scarcer and more valuable however legal water rights are based around the prior appropriation Doctrine instead which established a hierarchy of seniority that granted the rights to use water from rivers from whoever began using the water from them first and those senior water rights holders would continue holding their rights until they stopped using the water the settlers and farmers who came to the Southwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the ones who acquired most of these senior water rights early on and then they were only incentivized by the system to continue guzzling all of their water from the rivers even if they didn't actually need it because if they stopped using all the water they were allowed to they'd just lose their rights to it and the farmers would continue holding their senior rights even during times of water shortages in favor of anybody who came to the area after them with lower seniority like the millions upon millions of people that eventually came to settle in Southwestern cities like Phoenix Las Vegas and Tucson the people who came up with with these laws in the southwest a century ago of course were working with imperfect data and they didn't have the power of foresight there was no way they could have ever predicted the rise of huge metropolitan areas like Phoenix in the future that would greatly compete with the farmers in the area for access to water nor could they have predicted the onset of significant climate change and its effects in the later 20th and early 21st centuries that would reduce the supply of water in the Colorado River even further estimates have shown that as the Region's climate is warmed the snow pack that feeds the river in the Rocky Mountains has decreased in size while evaporation rates within the river have increased which collectively contributed to the river's flow decreasing by approximately 10% just between 2000 and 2021 all the while as the states continue to pull more water from the river than they probably should have been based on faulty and outdated Century old information and all as the legal prior appropriation Doctrine has incentivized the inefficient system to continue and all as millions of people have migrated to the region to add even further demands on the already stressed water supply so by the time that Phoenix was that small town of 65,000 residents in 1940 the area was already consuming a lot of water to feed all the Farms that had developed in the region and agriculture had become the desert State's dominant industry America was geoengineering green miracles in the desert and then following the conclusion of the second world war after 1945 Phoenix's population really began to start taking off due to multiple compounding factors that steadily built on top of one another the invention of the portable air conditioner the window unit in 1945 proved to be a revolutionary development and enabled air conditioning to become much more ubiquitous than it had ever been beforehand this was the key development that opened up the era of mass migration and settlement to Arizona and the rest of the American southwest since cheap and easy to install air conditioners made living in the state more tolerable and comfortable during the debilitatingly hot months of the summer cheap air air conditioning enabled land developers all around Phoenix to finally start taking advantage of the seemingly endless sprawling flat land around the city center in the valley and the water supplied from the below ground aquifers and from the Colorado River irrigation projects provided them with everything else they needed tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of cheaply built prefab single family homes were built radiating all around the endless flat land surrounding Phoenix and the low costs of housing combined with Arizona's low taxes and growing reputation as a retirement destination with beautiful winter weather and now tolerable Summers made possible by air conditioning and the burgeoning baby boomer population all led to the Genesis of Phoenix's population explosion in the 1950s but the last year of the decade in 1959 Phoenix experienced more new construction than it did over a three decade period beforehand between 1914 and 1946 and the City's population grew by nearly 74% within only 10 years and every single decade since then the city has continued seeing double digigit percentage growth rates with particularly huge surges in the 1970s and again in the 1990s and as the urban and Suburban populations of Phoenix grew its new population base and growing talent pool began attracting the interest of major outside companies as a new location to set up their operations or even headquarters in Phoenix today is a major center of the modern high-tech industry but all of that began with Motorola's decision to take a chance on Phoenix all the way back in 1948 when they built a brand new R&D Center in the city Motorola was encouraged to do so because of Arizona's low taxes and friendly business laws and Phoenix's proximity to their parallel operations that had already been established nearby in Southern California and this immediately became another huge advantage that Phoenix and Arizona had to continued population growth that their twin New Mexico simply didn't have their close proximity to the mega region that became Southern California anchored by Los Angeles and San Diego Phoenix is only about a 6-hour drive away from Los Angeles while the biggest city that ever developed in New Mexico Albuquerque is significantly more remote from other large metropolitan areas Denver is a 7-hour drive away from Albuquerque and Denver is substantially smaller than Southern California's the closest Mega region of comparable size to SoCal for Albuquerque became the Texas triangle region to its East and it's still about a 9 to 10hour Drive Away much further away than SoCal is from Phoenix and so Phoenix was able to capitalize on its close Geographic proximity to Southern California by offering lower taxes lower regulations and lower prices to lure businesses jobs and ultimately people away from Southern California in a way that Albuquerque and New Mexico were simply never able to match with Texas or Colorado nearby to them and after Motorola's establishment a major operations in Phoenix several other companies would begin following suit but the largest of all of them up until the 2020s would ended up being Intel in 1979 when they selected a suburb of Phoenix called Chandler for the construction of a huge brand new semiconductor manufacturing campus over the next 40 years through to 2020 Intel would invest more than 23 billion do into the construction of four highly Advanced semi-conductor foundaries or Fabs within their Chandler and later okao campuses just south of Downtown Phoenix and so Phoenix transformed into Intel's single largest semiconductor manufacturing site within the United States today more than 13,000 Intel employees work at their two Phoenix area campuses and based on 2019 data Intel's estimated annual economic impact on Arizona was more than $8.6 billion a year but a very notable problem with semiconductor manufacturing is that it is an extremely water intensive process water is used within semiconductor Fabs to clean nanoscale Wafers and Machinery of impurities and to cool down equipment and so an average Fab today will end up using several million gallons of heavily processed assessed Ultra Pure water per day as a result knowing this and aware of the water scarcity issues in the southwest Intel didn't build out their Fabs in Phoenix without also building out a large Water Reclamation facility alongside of them because of this Intel treats more than 9 million gallons of water a day at their campuses here which allows all four of their semiconductor Fabs to reuse and recycle their own industrial water supply constantly without having to pull very much more in from Phoenix's own water supply Still Water intensive Industrial practices like Intel semiconductor Manufacturing in the region is part of why approximately 6% of Phoenix's water supply is currently devoted to Industrial purposes along with 22% to municipal use and the overwhelming majority of 72% of the rest still to agricultural use with more huge companies like Intel that moved into the valley and all of the jobs and linked jobs that came with them the economy of Phoenix started booming and the population growth continued accelerating into the cheap easy to develop flat land that surrounded the city's core in every direction de Decades of explosive double-digit growth rates for Phoenix that followed after World War II contributed to the city soaring through the ranks of America's largest cities until eventually in 1980 Something astonishing happened Phoenix became the first and so far only City from America's Mountain West Region to break into the country's top 10 largest cities that year the 1980 US Census showed that Phoenix had accelerated more than a 100 places through America's largest city rankings and had grown by more than 10 times over in the span of only four decades to achieve a population of about 790,000 people edging out the city of Baltimore to take the position of America's ninth largest city a humbling moment for the city in Maryland that had once been America's second largest city for decades behind only New York itself but significant water issues developed for Phoenix that very same year as hundreds of thousands of new residents moved into the area they began competing for the state's limited Water Resources with the farmers who had secured most of the state senior water rights and so as Phoenix's population and economy each grew from the 1950s to 1980 the city and the state's water consumption continued increasing alongside them but interestingly Arizona's all-time high water consumption level happened in 1980 and the state has successfully managed to decrease their water consumption every single decade since then to the point where today Arizona consumes less water than it actually did nearly 7 years ago back in 1957 despite the state having more than six times the population as back then and more than 22 times the economy this is largely due to the fact that in 1980 as Phoenix First cracked into the top 10 biggest American cities Arizona started to get really serious about conserving their water in the future in order to guarantee that their growth would continue in a sustainable a way as possible the state created the Arizona Department of Water Resources that same year to begin clamping down down on inefficiencies in the state's use of water in order to discourage Residential Water use during the hotter summer months Phoenix begins simply charging its residents more for water and the summer which contributed to the number of homes in the city with water thirsty Lawns decreasing from nearly 80% of them in the 1970s toally around 10% of them today in 2024 the city begins switching to using treated waste water to water its golf courses and parks while today the city is also already building another plant to treat even more waste waterer for high quality Municipal drinking water by no later than 2030 and interestingly as the endless single family homes radiated out across the Phoenix landscape they often transformed the previously water guzzling farms and agricultural land in the area into suburban homes and strip mols which were considerably less water consuming than the Farms had been which contributed to the city saving even more water but perhaps most importantly the Arizona Department of Water Resources in Phoenix immediately in 198 began enforcing the 100-year assured water supply rule essentially the new rule meant that in order for developers to go ahead with new residential real estate development in Arizona they had to prove to the state that they could secure a stable 100-year water supply to actually meet the needs of the new development far into the future Wells accessing groundwater and aquifers beneath the valley that Phoenix sits a top of have been the primary source of the area's water supply for decades with groundwater continuing to represent about 41% of Arizona 's water supply with another 36% coming from Arizona's take of the Colorado River another 18% from instate Arizona Rivers like the small hila and salt rivers that cut across Phoenix while the remaining 5% comes from reclaimed water and again it's important to remember that by sector only 22% of Arizona's water consumption is currently being allotted to Municipal and residential use only 6% is being allotted to Industrial use and the whopping 72% of it is still being allotted to agricultural use and here's where all of the modern problems for Arizona's water supply start happening since 2000 the Southwest has been trapped in a historically significant Mega drought snow pack in the Rocky Mountains has been diminishing in volume as the climate is warmed which means that less water has been flowing into the Colorado River from its Headwaters moreover because of the overestimates of the 1922 Colorado River compact more water has been getting withdrawn from the Colorado River by the states around it that can be naturally replaced for decades which has meant that the river has been getting thinner and thinner to the point where today its water flows are a third lower than historical averages and the river doesn't even reach its natural Delta at the Sea of ctez in Mexico anymore because all of its water is held up in reservoirs behind dams withdrawn or evaporated before it can even reach it water levels in the huge Southwestern reservoirs like Lake me and Lake Pal have been routinely hitting record-breaking low volumes recently drawing concerns that if the water levels get low enough in them they'll no longer be capable of spinning their turbines and producing Hydro electric power than millions of American homes and businesses across the Southwest rely upon moreover the water levels in the reservoirs could get low enough that the water won't be able to reach the intake valves in the dams that control their flow out further Downstream which could turn the Colorado into a stale unmoving River a scenario that's known as a Deadpool fearful of this possible Deadpool outcome actually happening in 2022 the United States federal government warned that drastic cuts to the river's water withdrawals were going to be necessary to Stave off a catastrophe the states based around the laws of the Colorado River Compact and the West Senior water right system weren't able to come up with a deal amongst themselves which led the Biden Administration in early 2023 to do something that had never before happened in American history they threatened to unilaterally impose federally mandated water cuts on the state's water usage the Biden Administration considered two possible options to force upon the Colorado River basin's lower States option one was based around the state St system of senior water rights California which is the oldest and by far the largest user of water from the Colorado River would have been mostly spared from this option and to compensate catastrophic water withdrawal Cuts would have been forced upon the less senior water users Nevada and Arizona and their more recent Urban metropolises of Las Vegas and Phoenix that came to the region later than California's water users did under this scenario the aqueduct that brings water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and to Tucson as well would have essentially been allowed run dry option number two would have been to override the legal system of senior water rights in the southwest entirely and mandate equal water cuts on California Nevada and Arizona alike by as much as 133% of all of their withdrawals beyond what they had already agreed to cut which would have damaged the very significant agricultural sector that's present in Southern California that produces about 2third of America's vegetables during the winter when most of the rest of the country is too cold for growing anything well option two would have also IM immediately invited lawsuits from the state of California for violating their senior water rights luckily though the mere threat of those two possible options was what it took to finally make Arizona California and Nevada come together in negotiations and find some common ground in May of 2023 the three states agreed to voluntarily conserve at least an additional 3 million acre feet of water for three more years through the end of 2026 in exchange for $1.2 billion of money provided from the federal government California will make more than half of those cuts while Arizona has stated that they used about a third less water from the Colorado River in 2023 than they were legally allotted to under the 1922 compact the federal government has stated that these Cuts should be sufficient enough to Stave off a water crisis for the next few years until at least 2027 but when that year comes around the states will have to figure out a more long-term plan for dealing with the shrinking water in the Colorado River this issue is threatening Arizona's second larger source of water well while at the same time Arizona's largest source of water groundwater is coming under increasing Supply strains at the same time as well in June of 2023 at the same time as the drama was going on around the Colorado River water the Arizona Department of Water Resources released their latest 100-year groundwater model forecast for the Phoenix metropolitan area their model showed that the Phoenix area by then home to more than 4.7 million people only had enough remaining groundwater in their aquaverse to satisfy 96% of the area's projected groundwater demands over the coming Century through to the year 2121 and so in order to meet the projected 4% deficit in groundwater supplies over the next Century Maricopa County where Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs are located began immediately freezing their approvals of certain new residential developments in cities in the area that had not yet received a coveted designation from the Arizona Department of Water Resources a designation meaning cities whose residential building plans had already proven to the state state that they had access to a 100-year water supply approved residential developments in cities that already have these water designations like Phoenix itself and wealthier suburbs like Scottdale will continue on as planned but future Suburban real estate development out on the cheaper and lower income fringes of Phoenix in cities without these water designations that rely only on groundwater for their water supplies will now be rejected in other words Phoenix's infinite Suburban growth hack that has continued on unabated since the 1950 and that has kept real estate in the state cheap has finally hit its first major roadblock Arizona state representatives are ultimately confident though that they can weather through the storm and make up the 4% shortfall in their groundwater Supply after all Phoenix has already been steadily reducing the water they consume ever since the 1980s even as the population and economy have continued growing and there's more strategies they could always choose to implement to cut down on the water consumption even further Beyond freezing Suburban development in the area's outer fringes like mandating swimming pools be covered up when not in use to cut down on evaporation planting more trees along streets to reduce heat islands and begin actively discouraging the remaining 10% of homes in the Phoenix area with Lawns to abandon them like Los Vegas has already started doing in their City Farmers in Arizona and in California can also be encouraged and incentivized or if push really comes to shove forced to begin eliminating or reducing certain kinds of exceptionally water thirsty crops they grow with Colorado River water like Alfalfa which is used to produce hay for cattle and livestock but which truly consumes a huge amount of water relative to other crops fascinatingly Saudi Arabia used to grow a huge amount of alfalfa within their own desert country for decades to feed their own cattle and dairy herds but then as Saudi Arabia's own Water Resources began falling under similar Supply pressures the kingdom completely banned the growing of alfalfa within their country in 2018 and began acquiring agricultural land in other countries instead to grow Al Alfa somewhere else and ship it back one of these places of course was in Arizona where the Saudi Kingdom managed to acquire a least more than 3,000 acres of land just west of Phoenix where they grew huge amounts of alala to ship back to Saudi Arabia and they were even allowed to pump out unlimited amounts of the state's groundwater in the area free of charge to help them out with irrigation increasingly coming under pressure to do something about it Arizona just recently canceled the Saudis lease to the farm this month in February of 2024 perhaps becoming a harbinger of future cuts and restrictions to alala farming across the Southwest soon to come and terribly Phoenix's groundwater and Colorado River issues that started rearing their heads in the 2020s all came at just about the same time as the city began its transformation into one of America's most geopolitically significant cities as well because ever since Intel's huge operation ations in the city began more than 40 years ago Phoenix has been steadily evolving into America's new capital of semiconductor manufacturing the global capital of semiconductor manufacturing currently takes place on the island of Taiwan where more than 60% of the entire world supply of semiconductors are manufactured and where more than 90% of the world's most advanced ones are built and all of them are largely built by just a single Local Company there the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company or tsmc semic conductors or computer chips have become the lifeblood of the global economy in the 21st century they power just about every technological device you can think of from computers and smartphones and cars to military applications like guided missiles drones fighter jets and the emerging realm of artificial intelligence chip design companies like Nvidia Apple AMD and Intel largely design these chips at their headquarters in the California Bay Area but the manufacturing processes of building the chips take place outside of the state and for decades tsmc and and Taiwan managed to secure most of their outsourced manufacturing needs with Advanced and expensive chip foundaries or Fabs that they built in campuses all across their Island that strategy transformed tsmc into one of the world's most valuable Mega corporations today and with a current market cap of $565 billion tsmc ranks as among the top 10 most valuable publicly traded companies in the entire world but tsmc and their Priceless chip foundaries exist within an increasingly dangerous geopolitical neighborhood the People's Republic of China just across the sea claims the island of Taiwan as a core part of China and has repeatedly threatened the island with a military Invasion to forcefully establish their control over it the risks of a Chinese cross trrain invasion of Taiwan in the 2020s are continuing to grow with every passing year and in the event that it actually does eventually happen tsmc's Fabs on the island that produce most of the world's chips could become destroyed or captured by China which would be a complete economic and Military disaster for Western economies like the United States and Europe that rely so deeply on these chips to continue powering their economies and militaries 2third of tsmc's customer base for their chip manufacturing is based in the United States from the major design companies like apple Nvidia AMD and broadcom and sensing the geopolitical risks from China as early as 2020 tsmc decided to begin diversifying their Manufacturing operations by announcing a 12 billion investment towards building a brand new semiconductor manufacturing campus in the Phoenix Arizona area inspired to do so by Phoenix's low taxes and the city's prior experience hosting the two Intel semiconductor manufacturing campuses that were already present there that Intel had already invested more than $20 billion into by then and then just a couple years later in 2022 sensing the geopolitical risks around Taiwan themselves the Biden Administration passed the chips and science act which allocated nearly $53 billion in federal subsidies and tax credits for developing semiconductor manufacturing on American soil leading up to the passing of this act Intel announced that they would be doubling their prior investments in the Phoenix area with a new2 billion investment into the construction of two brand new Advanced semiconductor Fabs at their ooo campus which when finished will make the Phoenix area Intel's largest semiconductor manufacturing site worldwide and then encouraged by the chips sack subsidies and the prior commitment to A1 billion investment into a Phoenix area campus they made back in 20120 tsmc then announced something incredible in 2022 they would more than triple their investment into the Phoenix area up to a whopping $40 billion with a construction of not one but two brand new state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing campuses they will be producing advanced 4 nanometer and 3 Nan met semiconductors the most advanced and complicated that'll be built anywhere in the world outside of Taiwan this unprecedented level of investment into Phoenix by a foreign company represents nothing less than the single largest foreign direct investment in the entire history of the United States and the first campus should be up and running by next year in 2025 while the second campus should become operational by 2027 or 2028 with a combined investment of $60 billion into new semi conductor manufacturing facilities in Phoenix by tsmc and Intel tens of thousands of construction workers have descended onto the build sites and the Phoenix area's economy has been turbocharged into overdrive the sites will bring with them thousands if not tens of thousands of new high-paying tech jobs to the area and with the news in 2022 Maricopa County's GDP where Phoenix is located grew by a whopping 4.1% up against a 1.9% average growth rate across the ENT entire United States during the same time frame and more Investments are already being piled at top the giant ones being made by tsmc and Intel amcore a semiconductor product packaging and services company that's already headquartered in the Phoenix area also announced their own plans to build out a new $2 billion Factory that'll package and test tsmc's chips in the area that are destined for delivery to Apple Phoenix is therefore evolving into America's capital of semiconductor manufacturing for the 21st century in a similar way to what Detroit became as the capital of America's Automotive manufacturing during the 20th century by the late 2020s when these chip foundaries are up and operational Phoenix will also become tsmc's and America's primary manufacturing backup center for semiconductors in the event that China ever initiates a fullscale invasion of Taiwan which many analysts predict is most likely to happen in the later 2020s when these fams in Phoenix could be coming online right in the nick of time to prevent a major economic catastrophe for the United States moreover with the foundaries online and operational in Phoenix Washington will become blessed with a greater degree of strategic flexibility when it comes to dealing with the Chinese invasion of Taiwan right now without the chip foundaries in Phoenix Washington is highly incentivized to militarily come to taiwan's Aid during an invasion scenario in order to protect their continued access to taiwan's chip foundaries but with the chip foundaries in Phoenix Washington can afford to choose its response to Taiwan Invasion more carefully perhaps without direct us boots and boats and with massive indirect us arms deliveries instead like how Washington is already responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine Phoenix is therefore becoming one of America's most geopolitically significant cities as a result it is becoming Washington's greatest hedge against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan scenario and for that reason Washington will do whatever it takes to secure the area's water resources and stability in the future nonetheless the dramatic expansion of tsmc's and Intel's water intensive semiconductor manufacturing operations in Phoenix will certainly increase the share of water consumption in Arizona that's taken up by the industrial sector which currently only consumes about 6% of the state's water all as the population probably continues to increase as well and all as reductions are being made to the state's Water Supplies from groundwater and from the Colorado River tsmc has already said that they'll need to use nearly 9 million gallons of water a day to operate just a single one of their new Fabs which is equivalent to about 3% of Phoenix's entire current Water Production levels alone tsmc like Intel has already made preparations for huge Water Reclamation facilities within their Phoenix campuses that'll recycle virtually all of the water that they use but their plans are still attracting the ey of critics who are skeptical of the wisdom of such a hugely costly and water intensive investment into an area of the country that is already so stressed by Water Supplies the new giant semiconductor plants will directly compete with the farmers and with the Municipal Water users for the Region's diminishing water supplies and to attempt and plan ahead for that Arizona's leaders are already exploring different options for getting even more water into Phoenix and increasing the City supplies in addition to all of the strategies that I've already mentioned for reducing water consumption in Phoenix there are also bold and controversial new plant arising for increasing the city's water supply as well and the most contentious plan of all of them was first proposed to the Arizona Department of Water Resources by an Israeli company in 2022 the company IDE Technologies is a global leader in water desalination technology they pioneered the construction of many of Israel's highest capacity water desalination plants on their Mediterranean Coast that transforms undrinkable ocean saltwater into clean and safe drinking water in its Aid and desert environment with few supplies of natural freshwater desalination Tech revolutionized life within Israel and now as of 20122 more than 85% of Israel's drinkable water supply comes from these desalination facilities and IDE technology has already built out a $1 billion desalination plant on the US Pacific Coast nearby to San Diego in 2015 that's added to San Diego's Municipal Water Supply ever since and they're working on similar projects all around the world and so in 2022 they were coming to water stressed Arizona and Phoenix with their boldest new proposal yet their plan would cost $5 billion to realize only in its initial phase and would involve the construction of nothing less than the largest D salination facility ever in the world placed within Mexico on the sea of Cortez the closest nearby body of oceanic water to Arizona then a nearly 200m long water pipeline would be constructed from the plant across the the desert connecting it with both Phoenix and Tucson the largest urban areas in the state IDE Technologies claims that with further pipelines constructed along this route the company will eventually be capable of delivering up to 1 million additional acre feet of clean drinking water to Arizona on an annual basis which would significantly increase Arizona's water supply by nearly a seventh or by more than 14% which would more than make up for any of the diminishing supplies coming from the Colorado River and from the state's groundwater IDE technology said that they would fund the entire project privately if the State of Arizona agreed on a long-term commitment to buy the water that they provided but they've been very vague as to what buying all of this water would ultimately cost Arizona they've quoted estimates ranging between $ 2,200 and $3,300 per acre foot of water which on the higher end suggest that they could end up charging Arizona more than $3 billion a year for their deliveries of one million acre feet of annual water which is incredibly expensive there isn't even a consensus if Arizona will actually end up needing all of that extra water anytime soon in the first place and that's not even to mention that there's also significant environmental concern surrounding the project going forward as well the huge desalination plant on the sea of Cortez will pump out massive amounts of salt taken from the water back into the sea which will probably damage the maritime environment in the sea of Cortez even more than an already has been damaged by the Colorado River no longer even reaching its Delta area and moreover there were further concerns about the pipeline's route passing through and potentially disrupting the environment within the Oregon pipe cactus National Monument a UNESCO biosphere Reserve that's the only place in the United States where the Organ Pipe Cactus grows naturally that's why instead of building out the pipeline at all there's been a further proposal that Arizona could pay for IDE Technologies to build the desalination plant in in Mexico on the sea of Cortez Mexico would gain all of the desalinated water produced from the plant for their own uses and then in exchange Mexico would give up some of their water rights on the Colorado River to Arizona which would enable Arizona to increase their water supply from the Colorado River without having to construct a potentially environmentally damaging pipeline from Mexico but so far both of these proposals have remained exactly that proposals Arizona seems intent for now on adopting measures to cut down on water consumption rather than adopting measures aimed at increasing water supply there are concerns that if Arizona and Phoenix built out a pipeline from a desalination plant on the sea of Cortez they would be simply shifting their own environmental burden onto Mexico and kicking the Water Crisis can further down the road for future generations of arizonans to have to deal with instead the pipeline project would further geoengineer the sorin desert to allow millions of more people and their Industries to arise and th arrive within an area where they maybe shouldn't it might only contribute further to Phoenix's perception as one of the world's greatest monuments to man's arrogance but as the city and the state continue to Grapple with their already existing water supply issues and as more major companies and the jobs they attract move into the area with their increasing water demands the city may eventually be faced with no other choice in order to continue their unprecedented growth rate water is life and water is grow growth and in the desert water is the most precious resource of all in order to survive and continue growing for the next 80 years like it did for the past 80 Phoenix will need to be careful strategic and balanced with its supplies and consumption of water mankind will keep this Metropolis of millions in the desert going for as long as I can possibly afford to do so now there are simply too many deeply entrenched interests in the region to do otherwise but there may also eventually come a day whether it's a hundred years from now or even longer the that we won't be able to keep pushing nature out and bringing water in engineering solutions to complicated problems like Arizona's Water Crisis are important but they're also really fun and engaging to think about as tsmc and Intel invest more than $60 billion into building out their new world changing Semiconductor foundaries in Phoenix their demand for skilled American workers in this industry has never been higher they will require an army of Highly compensated computer scientists electrical engineers and technicians to work at their Giga Fabs arising in the Arizona desert and they fear that they won't have enough of them in July of last year the semiconductor industry Association and Oxford economics released a joint study that estimated America would be facing a shortage of nearly 70,000 skilled semiconductor industry workers by the end of this decade in 2030 and if you're interested in learning more about becoming one of these future highly in- demand workers in this industry it would help to begin learning about Concepts like computer science and electrical engineering right now with this video sponsor brilliant brilliant is a stem learning platform that helps you learn by actually doing they don't just give you a mount in a text and then expect you to remember everything you just read they use interactive exercises to teach you the intuitive principles and then build these principles upon each other so that you can genuinely understand complex career oriented subjects like computer science and electricity and magnetism or data visualization and Analysis statistics and tons of others they really know 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Channel: RealLifeLore

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Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: AjQuZfkU1jI

Length: 50min 16sec (3016 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024