A news analysis was just released that shows oops, there is not enough groundwater underneath the Phoenix metro area to meet projected demands over the next century, an insurmountable problem for the quickly growing outer suburbs. Via the Washington Post:

The report from the Arizona Department of Water Resources amounts to a chilling warning for the nation’s fifth-largest city and a metropolitan area with more than 5 million people that has been a development hot spot for new residents and high-tech businesses. In Phoenix’s peripheral areas, subdivisions have spread through the desert on a massive scale and hundreds of thousands more homes are planned. The study means that plans for future housing developments that rely solely on groundwater — in outlying areas that have not yet verified their long-term water supply — could not move forward.

And as the climate gets hotter and drier in the West, and major water sources such as the Colorado River diminish, dwindling supplies of groundwater as outlined in the new report could portend a vastly different future than the one residents in the Southwest have come to expect.

The long-awaited report, announced by Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), projects that about 4 percent of the demand for groundwater, or 4.9 million acre-feet of water, will not be met over the next 100 years without further action.

What would Imaginary-Governor Kari Lake do? "Build them suckers, worry about it later!"

Terry Goddard, a former Phoenix mayor, said the message of Thursday’s study is: “You’re living on borrowed water.”

“You need to be conscious of every drop,” he said. “You can’t build unless you know exactly where the water is coming from.”