WATER POLITICS

It boggles the mind.

Today I happened upon two news stories that show that the West’s money-fueled Growth Machine relentlessly will churn on—with or without a lick of water or, it seems, common sense.

1. Clark County, Nevada’s zoning commission last week approved a proposal to construct a 429-home development on private land adjacent to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area west of Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. If ultimately built—more hurdles still await—the development would cover about 671 acres of open space that is currently the site of a gypsum mine. It also would be a classic case of leapfrog development: Since it sits about four miles outside the existing urban boundary, extending utilities and services to the development will facilitate development on the intervening private lands.This development, while far smaller than the 5,000+ homes proposed by the developer 20 years ago, would act as a seed for sprawl, in other words. The water, which presumably would come from the shrinking Colorado River, would have to be pumped uphill hundreds of vertical feet.
2. Colorado Springs’ city council is considering annexing 3,200 acres to make way for a 9,500-home development proposed by La Plata Communities, which is behind several other master-planned communities in the Colorado Springs area with ironic names like “The Farm.” The new community, Amara (“Welcome to the New West”), would sprawl across undeveloped plains southeast of—and apart from—current city limits on the banks of Fountain Creek. It would use about 3,500 acre-feet of water once it’s built out, according to a Gazette report. About 70% of Colorado Springs’ water supply comes from the Colorado River and is shipped over the Continental Divide via a trans-basin diversion.

I mean, do these people know that we’re in the midst of the most severe drought in over a millennium?

The land use application for the Nevada project barely even mentions water, simply saying that the developer will work with the proper authorities to acquire it. Colorado Springs council members expressed concerns about water supplies, but the utilities folks said it wouldn’t be a problem because they have the rights to 22,000 acre-feet more than the city’s residents consume. And if they run out of that, they can always “buy and dry” a farm or two, I suppose.

Apparently they didn’t get the memo: Colorado River water users must cut consumption, big-time, or else the whole damned system on which 40 million people rely will collapse. Adding thousands of new houses—no matter how efficient they may be—and therefore new water users, is not compatible with cutting consumption, and therefore is another step toward collapse. The operators of the Growth Machine, it seems, are utterly oblivious to that obvious fact. It is preposterous that we are talking about drying up farms that feed people to save water even as cities and counties are approving massive, water-guzzling developments.

The Nevada developers—Gypsum Resources—aren’t even pretending that their homes will somehow address the housing affordability crisis. Those properties, and their views of the Las Vegas Strip on one side and Red Rock NCA on the other, will fetch a pretty penny. But the La Plata Community representative said Amara will have a few “attainable” townhomes that could go for as low as $350,000. According to Zillow, those homes would be “affordable” for folks making $110,000 per year or more with a $17,000 down payment, and still way out of reach for the average Colorado Springs household with a $68,000 median income. And that’s before factoring in the cost of commuting through the sprawl each day.

But, of course, these developers don’t care about affordability. They care about money. And they will sell their houses for as much as the market will bear, which these days is a buttload. Adding a few thousand homes to the inventory may bring prices down slightly, but surely not enough to accommodate the average working class family. Besides, building sprawling master-planned communities on the exurban fringe is not the way to address the housing affordability crisis.

What’s most baffling to me is that the city and county and planning officials talk as if they must build these homes in order to accommodate projected growth, which they see as inevitable and completely out of their control. It’s not. County and city officials have the tools to limit growth if they choose to use them. Take the proposed Amara community: The developers asked Colorado Springs, rather than the closer city of Fountain, to annex their property because Fountain could not or would not provide water. And when La Plata asked Fountain to de-annex an additional 2,500 acres, the city refused, kiboshing the development, at least temporarily.

Growth is not inevitable. But if we don’t stop new development, running out of water will be.