I’m going to call it now. Arizona will swing red in this election. The legislature will remove some of the restrictions, allowing more homes to be built. The water crises will get worse. It will go beyond a tipping point, to a point of no return. People will get tired of having less water. Then they will start moving in droves. Housing prices will collapse. Anyone who doesn’t sell before then will find no one wants to buy their house and they will be stuck.

It will take quite a few years for that to play out but it will happen.

Having lived in Arizona for a few years and worked in the renewable energy industry there, I always found it surprising no long term planning on anyone’s part is done when designing a water-intensive project especially in the big cities. The problem is that water will still always flow through Phoenix, whether it’s the Colorado River or even more canal projects from other states, and rural folks will always drill deeper for water. It’s not a problem that there isn’t water it’s just the accessibility of the groundwater and how saline it is. The previous governor, Ducey, even suggested the state invest in desalination tech. The surface manifestations (ie earth fissures) of GW withdrawal are obvious but humans find a way to engineer around it or in some cases of Arizona desert they just don’t build there.