WATER POLITICS

Arizona recently announced new constraints on housing development in the areas around Phoenix. At issue is water rights and scarcity, which have been a challenge for the US Southwest for as long as people have been living there. That being said, the region is currently in the midst of a 25-year megadrought and when you combine that with booming growth, difficult choices may have to be made. But how do water rights get divided? Who holds them? How much is water worth to the housing developers, farmers and semiconductor manufacturers that have flocked to the state? To learn more, we speak with Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. We discuss both current and past water management practices in the state.