Oh gosh, who could possibly have foreseen that a town built in a desert might run low on water? It’s just so random and weird and out of nowhere.
Mayor Curtis Stacy starts every morning checking two websites that tell him how much he needs to worry about water.
One site tells him about the reservoir that supplies his tiny desert town — it’s effectively empty. The other site tells him if the town gets additional water that other communities with more senior rights aren’t using; right now, the answer is yes.
But Stacy tries to remind Kearny’s roughly 2,000 residents that they could easily tip back into crisis mode, just like this spring. In newsletters, he underscores that fragility with no less than 20 exclamation points. If other communities call for more water, they will have to cut back again.
You see, this is because it’s in a desert. What is a desert? It’s a place with little or no water. If you build a town in a desert, even a tiny town, it’s going to have little or no water, because of the “in a desert” part. If you like having plenty of water, don’t live in a desert.
Kearny is an extreme example of the water crunch facing communities across the West as states and cities stare down a future of “megadrought” and fight over scarce resources. An unusually dry winter this year left the Southwest parched, with not enough water for everyone laying claim to it.
Kearny is in Arizona. There’s a reason Arizona is called Arizona.
The town tried to prepare residents late last year for what was coming. In a Dec. 29 letter, officials warned that the reservoir fed by their primary water source, the Gila River, was running low.
The first question in the FAQ section was, “What happens if our allotment is zero?”
Answer: “Severe restrictions will be imposed.”
Why? Because if the water isn’t there, then it isn’t there. Mayors can’t wave a magic wand and cause it to be there.
In late March, Kearny imposed “Level 5″ restrictions on water — the most stringent possible. A declaration of emergency told residents they could use water only for the essentials; the mayor went door to door to convey the situation’s gravity. There would be no washing of cars, no kiddie pools, and no watering of grass. Even the Little League field would go dry.
Ffs. People have to be told this? Of course you don’t wash the damn cars or water the damn grass in a drought.
At the bar across the street from the Little League field, people wondered when the monsoon season would bring some real rain. But everyone thought the town would get through the water crisis. When Kathy Taft asked her friend Dave Olsen if the town was “really going to run out of water,” Olsen answered without hesitation.
“No,” he said. “I just don’t see that happening.”
Oh well then. Dave just doesn’t see it happening, so it won’t happen.
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