The Daily: Arizona’s Pipe Dream

What does Malcolm Gladwell think about staying in the same profession your whole career?

There is a very large and underestimated risk in not changing your career trajectory.

That was his advice on my podcast, The Next Chapter, by American Express Business Class.

I'm Carter Garcia, and this season I sit down with bestselling authors including James Clear,

Julie Zoo, and David Epstein to discuss business lessons from their books and what they would

write for their next chapter.

And in the next chapter, by American Express Business Class, wherever you get your podcasts.

It's just past 7 a.m. in Phoenix.

I'm standing at the top of Camelback Mountain.

It's the highest point in the area, and I can see for miles in every direction.

And what you see for miles in every direction is green.

There is an unbelievable lushness to this place, not just in terms of green lawns and

golf courses, but even the tree canopy.

And if you drive an hour in any direction, the contrast couldn't be more clear.

You hit almost totally barren desert.

And so the first impression and the overwhelming impression that you get from looking down

on Phoenix from above is it's a miracle.

How humans have managed to build a garden in the desert and a garden whose scale is

impossible to capture.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily.

A comprehensive Times investigation reveals that in much of the United States, Americans

are pumping out groundwater at alarming rates.

And that this essential source of water for much of the country has reached a critical

point.

Today, my colleague Christopher Flaville goes to the state at the forefront of this crisis

and looks at one especially controversial idea to address it.

It's Friday, September 1st.

So Chris, tell me about this groundwater crisis that you and our colleagues spent months

reporting on.

So almost every part of the US relies on groundwater for drinking, for farming, for basically fueling

modern society.

And that water has built up deep underground over thousands, in many cases over millions

of years in aquifers and it's pumped up through wells.

But what's important is that water isn't just replaced by rain.

Even hurricanes like the one in Florida this week won't be enough to replenish them once

that water is pumped out.

In many cases, it's effectively gone.

So what we did is something that no one else has done, really.

We built a comprehensive database using data we could find all around the country, trying

to get the best picture possible to see what the health of American aquifers is.

How much water are we using?

How much is left?

What are the consequences?

And what we found is that in much of the country, almost everywhere in the country, there's

a problem with pumping up groundwater too fast at a rate that means in many places we're

at risk of running out.

And if that happened, it would fundamentally change those places.

And not just in the West, but across the US, places like Maryland and Kansas and Arkansas

and New York and Minnesota, places you don't think of as having water problems that are

actually quite at risk.

And there's one state that maybe is in the most dire position around groundwater and

also is sort of at the forefront of trying to figure out how to respond to it.

And that's Arizona.

Arizona is limiting new construction around Phoenix as the state's water supply continues

to dwindle.

State officials say there isn't enough groundwater for housing construction that has already

been approved.

This is now a reality check.

This is people in Arizona finally saying, you know what?

We can't live without water and we're running out of our water.

Exhibit A in that crisis is the recent decision at the beginning of June when the governor,

Katie Hobbs, announced,

Today I'm directing the Arizona Department of Water Resources to publish the Phoenix

Active Management Area groundwater model.

That the amount of groundwater underneath Maricopa County isn't enough to support all

the homes that have already been approved for construction.

If we do nothing, we could face a 4% shortfall in groundwater supplies over the next 100

years.

And they said any developers that want approval to build new subdivisions have to find some

other source of water aside from groundwater.

That's why as required by law, we will pause approvals of new assured water supply determinations

that rely on pumping groundwater.

Which is just a real jolt to a system built on rapid and really endless growth.

And it could mean a deep shift in the way people live and work in Arizona.

Like what exactly do you mean?

Like not having enough water to actually drink and bathe?

Yeah, having enough water to prepare your food, to bathe, to wash your clothes, to water

your lawn.

You know, if you spend time in Arizona, it's a real land of bounty, right?

People aren't living lives where they have to ration anything, but this would begin to

shift Arizona into a place where there just isn't enough of this fundamental component

of life.

I mean, it sounds like the beginning of the end for growth in Arizona.

Yeah, and if you think about what Arizona is, this is a real shift.

Growth is an underpinning of Arizona's economy and identity.

And the state's been able to attract people from all over the country with the promise

really of, you know, bounty in the desert.

And that could begin to change.

But if you go to Phoenix and the expanding suburbs around Phoenix, people don't seem

especially worried about it.

They still seem pretty bullish about the future.

Give me your sense to how do you describe Buckeye to people who don't live there?

You don't have to shovel sunshine ever.

So take, for example, a fast growing town, city, really, just west of downtown Phoenix

called Buckeye.

It's not unlike a place you could see anywhere in the country.

Because strip malls and houses, you wouldn't know you were in a desert to drive through

Buckeye.

Buckeye grew up very fast in the past 20 years from like 8,000 people to over 100,000 people

right now.

And so I spoke to the head of Buckeye's water department, Terry Lowe, and other city officials.

They've already been told at the start of this year that there isn't enough groundwater

beneath Buckeye to support new developments.

That's not a secret at this point, but it doesn't seem to be having any drag on sort

of optimism in the town.

And if you want to go see the ocean, it's only about four or five hours away.

And if you want to go skiing, you can go.

And if you get, you can ski, you can ski in the desert in one minute and skiing in the

next and be back in the same day.

And the result is there's still talking about how to grow.

If you haven't lived here, you haven't done a little bit of research, you would think

that water is not available and is a challenge and we're going to run out or that type of

thing.

We're not in any way, shape, or form close to any of that.

So their debate is not whether to grow or whether they can maintain their quality of

life.

It's where to find the water to support that growth.

There's water here.

It's just, it's not how much water it's, it's how much do you want to pay for it?

Because the easy water was spoken for 100 years ago and now it's the more challenging water

that's going to have a cost associated with it.

Okay.

So Arizona is in this water crisis.

Much of the state has been told they can't grow anymore.

And yet these people in these suburbs are still talking about growth.

How do they reconcile that?

Well, remember they've been told there's not enough groundwater, but they haven't been

told they can't grow.

The state has said the groundwater it has now in many key areas can't support more growth.

But if they can find new sources of water, there's nothing stopping them from growing.

And what I found from talking to people in the Phoenix area is they think they can do

that.

They feel like this is a problem that they can solve.

But I mean, how do you find more water?

Well, that's the question.

And knowing that communities all over Arizona will need more water last year, Arizona, realizing

the trouble it was facing set up a new program where they set aside money, a lot of money,

a billion dollars, and hired new staff try to answer that question.

Where to find the water?

And the term of art is water augmentation.

And there's one idea they're looking at.

It's desalination.

Desalination.

Okay.

Desalination sounds like you take salt out of ocean water.

Very good.

So obviously the problem here is not that there's not enough water in the world.

Desalination's cover, what, two-thirds of the earth's surface is that there's not enough

fresh drinkable water.

So desalination is taking the resource that we have an abundance of and turning it into

the thing that's scarce.

And how they do that is you push that water through a membrane, it's kind of a filter

at really high pressure and the filter strips out the salt and you're left with perfectly

drinkable water, which in theory, if it comes from the ocean, means you've got, if not an

infinite supply, then certainly enough water to answer the challenges in Arizona.

How much of an established thing is this, this desalination?

So this is actually widely used.

There are several desalination plants in the U.S. already, many of them in California and

Texas.

In the Middle East, Persian Gulf countries, in Israel, it's widely used.

This is not a new technology.

I think what's changing is as climate change makes more and more places water scarce, more

people are saying, wait, can that be our solution as well?

And now Arizona is in that camp.

And in fact, the company that proposed this idea to Arizona is, and it's really a company

called IDE Technologies, one of the largest desalination operators in the world.

And IDE actually went to Arizona to speak to the committee tasked with finding more water.

Their acronym is WIFA late last year and formally pitched this idea of providing desalinated

water to Arizona.

Famous for its beautiful diverse landscapes and nature, such as the Grand Canyon and its

vast and ancient history.

The state of Arizona is a shining star on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Okay, but how would this actually work?

I mean, you need ocean water, right?

And Arizona is, of course, not on the ocean.

That's the catch.

Arizona is not, in fact, on the ocean.

The Arizona Water Project Solution Team as a private sector critical infrastructure

solution.

So what IDE proposed in this video presentation they made for WIFA will develop, design, build,

is to build the desalination plants, not in Arizona, the largest in the world to date,

seawater desalination plant, but across the border in Mexico.

The desalination plant will be located at Puerto Penaresco, Sonora, Mexico, drawing seawater

from the Sea of Cortez, and then build a pipeline that would run 200 miles, a lot of it uphill,

to deliver that desalinated water from Mexico to Phoenix, ensuring the needs and growth

of the state of Arizona, as well as the entire region forever.

You may call it an infinite and unlimited reverse Colorado River.

So this is wild.

They're proposing a giant pipeline to bring ocean water off of Mexico, all the way up

to Arizona, like this huge river flowing backwards.

Instead of water flowing hundreds of miles to the sea, this would be ocean water flowing

hundreds of miles inland.

When you put it like that, it does sound a bit crazy.

And even proponents acknowledge this is a pretty initially outlandish seeming idea.

There are so many obstacles, geographic, political, economic, right, energy obstacles,

so many things that make this seem like a pipe dream.

But it's also a pipe dream that really could happen.

So I wanted to understand what the obstacles would be.

And the logical place to start was Puerto Penaresco, the city on the shore of the Gulf

of California, sometimes called the Sea of Cortez, where this desalination plant would

get built.

It's a city of about 60,000 people.

It's an hour south of the border between Arizona and Mexico.

And from the ocean, it's beautiful.

It's got luxury villas and high-rise condos on a really attractive beach.

It's a tourism mecca for people from Arizona and from Mexico.

It's a fishing economy.

You can see people going out in boats.

The interior of the city is quite different.

There's significant poverty rates.

A lot of the roads are unpaved.

A lot of the buildings aren't painted.

And so when I got there, what I wanted to understand was how officials in Puerto Penaresco

viewed this idea to build a desal plant for Arizona.

So the idea is that IDE would acquire land in Puerto Penaresco.

And as part of the deal, it would provide some desalinated water to Puerto Penaresco

and other nearby cities, though it hasn't said how much water it would provide or how

much it would charge or even whether it's a price that local residents could afford

to pay.

So IDE told Arizona lawmakers in December that their plan was to build the largest desal

plant anywhere in the world here in Puerto Penaresco, pipe the water to Arizona and also

provide some water to Puerto Penaresco.

Have you talked to them?

We have no knowledge of them.

And the thing to remember is Puerto Penaresco and the area around it is also desert, so

drinking water is a real challenge there, too.

So I wanted to ask officials if they thought this would be a good thing, because of course

the plan can't go forward if Mexican officials rejected.

If they called you, what would you say?

Is it a good idea?

Nosotros siempre vamos a estar abiertos.

You are always going to be open to this subject.

And to my surprise, these local officials said they think desalination is actually a

really important and probably necessary thing for Puerto Penaresco because of their water

shortages, but with some caveats and the main one is cost.

How much could you afford to pay?

They stressed that there's only so much local residents can pay for this water.

Puerto Penaresco, again, is not a rich place.

If the desal plan is four times as much, and this was five times or six times or ten times,

could you afford it?

No.

No.

No, it's too high.

Okay.

Okay.

But these officials were also worried about the environmental costs of doing this.

So again, desalination involves pushing salt water through a membrane, filtering out the

salt, and then taking that sort of slurry, that highly saline brine, and doing something

with it.

In some parts of the world, they'll inject it deep underground, where in theory it won't

be a concern.

But in this case, IDES said they would put that salty brine back into the Gulf of California.

But just releasing the brine back into the water, it's not a good idea.

No, right?

No.

Okay.

So what do you think will happen?

You've got this real problem.

What's the answers are all difficult or expensive?

If we meet again five years from now, what do you think we'll look back on and see that

you did?

Okay.

In five years, we're going to be having to desalinate more.

Okay.

So that's just going to become more expensive to live in Puerto Penaesco.

So their positions seem to be that whether it's this particular deal with IDE and Arizona

or not, desalination is part of the future in Puerto Penaesco, which means this issue

of what to do with that waste brine is one they have to think about a solution for.

Hi.

Hi.

So it's sort of a lovely spot, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's so beautiful.

Yeah.

I'm an environmentalist, a woman named Nelita Barajas Acosta, who helps laid out for me.

I mean, just from looking at it, it's an open area.

They wouldn't have to tear down any buildings.

They wouldn't have to throw anyone out of their homes, dried by the water.

It seems good.

No?

Well, think about this.

Not because you're seeing an empty land, that means that it is empty.

You know, they are biodiversity there.

And after we got to her office, I asked her to walk me through what the environmental

impacts would be from this idea.

And she was very clear they would not be good.

So when IDE discusses this, they've been very clear that there would be no negative impact

from the ground.

Is that accurate?

No.

No.

So by changing the density, you know, the salinity of the water in this area, this is like the

air pollution.

Your flume, it is not only in the place you are releasing, but it will be dispersed in

all around the sea of Cortez.

And the effects on fisheries will be dramatic.

The point she is making is that it's not the salt itself.

It's the concentration of the salts that poses a threat to sea life.

And in the open ocean, when desalination plants are built, say, on the coast of California,

that salty brine, that intense waste brine is broadly dispersed because of the currents

and just the open space.

But this is different because you're talking about dispersing that same concentrated brine

into a really narrow gulf where it doesn't have the same capacity to be sort of wildly

dispersed quickly.

So the concern that she has, and I heard from others, is that though desalination plants

like this can work and don't have to be a significant hazard on the open ocean, in this

context, in this kind of a narrow gulf, it could be a real problem for the fish and wildlife

that live there.

Of course we need water, but let me tell you something.

I travel this afternoon, travel to Phoenix, and what I see is a society that do not recognize

how important the water is and just want more water for more things that are not the

essential.

By walking by downtown, you know, it looks like California, swimming pools and amazing

gardens is, this is not right, we are living in the desert and you have to be so responsible

on being a desert habitant that that changed you forever.

And her larger point is rather than trying to find new sources of water that could potentially

hurt the environment, why not focus instead on conserving water and living more with

in the confines of a desert?

Right.

Now, despite the really serious environmental concerns, at the end of my time in Puerto Poneasco,

it seemed to me like this idea wasn't obviously a non-starter, it would be a lot to get everyone

to say yes, who asked to say yes, but I left with the idea that it could happen.

Okay, so that would be the situation around the source of new water for Arizona.

And of course, even if Mexico decides they're down for this deal, you know, you still have

to bring the water there to Arizona as we're discussing.

So how's that going to go?

Here's one of the biggest problems.

You've got to run a 200-mile pipeline through some of the most ecologically important and

unique landscape in the area and then the towns nearby.

A consultant for IDE told state officials that the pipeline would require a 175-foot

wide corridor and the transmission line to power the project would also require a 150-foot

right-of-way corridor.

Wow.

So we're talking about a significant amount of land that this pipeline would take up.

So I want to understand what the impact would be.

So I drove the path it would take and the first place you come to once you cross the

border into Arizona is the Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is a UNESCO site

and it's federal land preserved for its natural significance.

And people don't understand when they say, oh, it's just a desert, it's just a desert.

Well, it's a very lush desert.

Yes.

Yes.

I spent time there with two local environmentalists, Miche Lozano and Lorraine Eiler, and they

took me around this really indescribably beautiful and rich landscape.

What does it look like, Chris?

Well, I say welcome to Kido Vakido.

Thank you.

I had never even heard of it.

I'm so glad we're here.

It's filled with these gigantic cactuses, the namesake organ pipe cactuses and saguaro

cactuses.

They tower over the landscape.

They're almost like cartoons, vaguely humanoid gigantic cactuses.

And then there's the color, right?

In addition to the cactuses, every plant seemed to be flowering at the same time and it was

unbelievable the array of like bright reds and yellows and oranges.

It was the exact opposite of what I thought the desert would be.

And there was also not an inch of open space.

Everything was packed tightly together.

So that could be one of the biggest challenges facing the project, what it would cost in

terms of carving a path, the width of multiple freeways through this landscape.

And then in addition to the impact on the land and the wildlife, there's also the impact

on the Native Americans who have roots in this area that Ohono autumn people.

My great-great grandparents are buried there and other relatives, which was at one time

a huge community.

So, yes, it has a lot of significance to us.

It's a place where we have still have our ceremonies.

We hold it in very high esteem, you know, we consider it a sacred place.

Even after the national parks have taken it over, we still go there for religious purposes.

And I should say IDE said in their presentation to Arizona officials that they would go around

the wildlife areas and minimize the impact.

It's not clear to me from being there how that would work.

It seemed like the only way to run this pipeline to transport water to Phoenix is to cut a

really significant hole through this national monument.

Right.

So it's an open question whether I guess, you know, the federal government will allow

what sounds like would be a significant consequence to this national monument.

Yeah.

And then as you follow the path of the proposed pipeline north beyond the national monument,

there are communities that would almost certainly be impacted.

Anything you guys recommend I try and see while I'm in town?

Somewhere to eat.

Where would you be?

First, our condensation would go early.

Right.

I went to one town called Aho, which is a beautiful little community in the desert with small homes

and a beautiful laid out garden in the middle of town.

It's really a jewel of a place.

The pipeline would either go through or skirt this town.

It's unclear what the effect would be, but when you talk to community advocates about

it, they're worried.

I talked to Aaron Cooper, he's the head of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance

and Advocacy Group, and he was concerned.

But the history, there's a history of eviction in this community.

There's a history of disenfranchisement.

He was referring to Aho's history as a mining town, a town that really exists for the purpose

of mining copper and how people who live in Aho have been pushed around at times and had

their land confiscated to suit the whims of big companies.

So if the company were to try to take this land for the right of way, if you're on a

domain through the county, there'd be a history that it was playing into, I guess, like sort

of a painful history.

It's hard to say if those fears would come true.

Maybe the pipeline could go around Aho, but what does seem clear is the pipeline might

not be welcomed with open arms in the places it would pass through, and that could represent

another obstacle that Arizona has to think about when it's deciding what to do with this

idea.

Right.

Okay, but let's assume for the sake of argument that the pipeline clears those hurdles and

it gets built.

For most of the people in Arizona who are concentrated around Phoenix, is there just

pure upside?

Well, we come now to the main problem for people in Arizona, which is cost.

Even if this desalination plant and pipeline can get built, the question then is, what

does it mean for a state where an affordable cost of living is a big part of the draw?

A lot of people who move to Arizona come from places like California or New York, and maybe

they're fleeing a high cost of living.

All of a sudden, you've got a situation where the cost of water is going up a lot.

Some estimates are the price of water can be as much as 10 times higher.

A big increase to the cost of living in Arizona.

At this point, you're looking at a financial burden, which raises the question of if water

is available, but for some people too expensive, what would that mean for growth?

How would that affect the appeal of Arizona as this affordable paradise in the sun?

This is pretty hard, right?

They're upsides, but also some pretty serious downsides to this thing.

How does this decision get made?

Who decides for the state of Arizona whether they want to go for it?

It turns out that decision falls really on the shoulders of one person.

I found that guy and asked him what he thought.

After the break, that guy.

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Hi.

You're a regular listener of the daily.

You like knowing what's going on in the world.

Well, you could know way more if you subscribe to The New York Times.

I'm Michael Simon Johnson.

I'm one of the producers that makes the daily.

What we can cover on the show is really just a sliver of the incredible reporting that's

being published every day in the New York Times.

Unexpected, insightful articles you might never otherwise come across.

For me, that's this piece about how states legally classify butterflies.

It has to do with whether they're considered wildlife.

It's hard to explain, but it's fascinating and you should just read it.

The Times obviously delivers the vital, essential news of the day, much of which we cover on

the daily, but there is so much beyond that to explore.

And yes, you support all of this journalism when you become a subscriber to The New York

Times, but you also get to experience it.

You get your curiosity fed.

You get to know cool stuff and you get to be informed about what's going on in the world.

You can subscribe at nytimes.com slash subscribe.

So Chris, you said that there's really one guy at the heart of this decision about whether

Arizona moves forward with this plan.

Tell me how he's thinking about this.

So this person is Chuck Potolac and he's the head of WIFA, the Water Infrastructure Finance

Authority.

That's the body that was given a billion dollars to help Arizona find and get new water.

And he's not deciding for Mexico, if this is a good deal for Mexico, he's not deciding

for the US government whether or not there should be a pipeline that's allowed to cross

the border, go through federal land.

His job is to figure out whether this deal is good for Arizona and then decide, along

with the board members at WIFA, if Arizona should spend money on this.

Should we set up here?

Is this the right spot?

Yeah, that's very good.

And he invited me into his office to talk about how he's trying to decide if this project

is the right way or one of the right ways to augment and find new water for the state.

To simplify it, it does seem as though WIFA as an agency and you as a director have enormous

responsibility here.

You authorize to spend a huge amount of money and the stakes are so high.

Is it daunting?

Is it a burden?

Is it exciting?

What's your state of mind building this process of deciding how to augment Arizona's water

supply?

Yeah, I think it is a bit daunting.

And we walked through some of the challenges and how he's looking at them.

WIFA only works if people are willing to pay.

His assessment seems to revolve around some of the challenges we talked about and primarily

around the cost.

To make a large project like that, you have to have political buy-in.

That's not a decision that's...

And does he seem to be taking into consideration the environmental concerns, both in Mexico

and along the route the pipeline would take?

He's not as much taking into account the environmental concerns, both in Mexico and Arizona.

It's not really his job, but those potential environmental costs could play a role in

Mexico and in D.C.'s calculation.

It would be irresponsible for me to bring to the board a recommendation for a project

that we didn't feel comfortable had the political stability that had the buy-in, the long-term

and that means benefits on both sides of the border.

So for him to back the plan, he said he needs to feel like it can get approval from both

countries.

But he sounded more confident than you might think.

What might you recommend as the way to think about how crazy this is?

Crazy so it will never happen or like crazy, but that's not really a barrier.

It will seem crazy and ambitious until it's complete.

And that's our history in Arizona.

He really put this idea in the broader context of Arizona and made the point that if you

look throughout Arizona's history, the state has been built on this constant progression

of water projects that when they first get proposed sound insane until they get built.

We have an artificial river that runs uphill from Lake Havasu to Tucson, several hundred

miles.

That is a crazy audacious idea, but it's done and now we barely give it a second thought.

And he mentioned the classic example, the sort of foundation of modern Arizona is something

called the Central Arizona Project.

It's an aqueduct that carries water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and it's the

source of Phoenix's amazing growth.

His point was this isn't the first time Arizona has faced a situation where they need more

water and they're looking at seemingly crazy ideas.

But when you get down to it, they're not impossible ideas.

They're very expensive.

They require a lot of coordination, a lot of money, possibly environmental problems

in some places.

The idea is if the alternative is Arizona doesn't grow, well, maybe it's worth putting

in that money.

There's not a body or person who says we need to grow more or less.

There's people wanting to come to Arizona.

There's a lot of reasons why people come to Arizona.

It's an attractive place to do business.

It's an attractive place to live.

You get the feeling talking to Chuck that he sees Arizona as a place where obstacles,

even big obstacles like water can be overcome if you're just willing to think big enough.

It's this foundational optimism that allows the West to persevere in the face of a really

hostile climate that's only becoming more hostile.

To his mind, this latest idea for a desal pipeline project was just one more iteration

of that ideal that keeps driving the American West.

We don't have the luxury of looking at Arizona from the outside and saying, gee, that's really

rough.

We have to say, yes, it is, it's hard, but what are we going to do next?

How are we going to deliver water?

How are we going to continue to serve customers and citizens of the state?

These are tough issues.

There's no clear way out.

It's going to be expensive.

It's going to be hard, but we can't throw our hands up and just say it's too hard.

We have to figure out a way.

He's basically saying, we've always done this, and we're going to do it again.

We've bent the environment to our will, all in service of growth, but of course to keep

growing and growing into infinity, even if we technically can, raises the question of

whether they should.

Does he think about that question?

Not can we build it, but should we?

That's a great question, and I asked him that.

What's your response?

Somebody says, Arizona, you shouldn't have built that much.

Are they wrong?

I would say we're not ignorant.

We're just up for the challenge.

It's not that we don't know it's dry.

It's not that we don't know we've got challenges.

It's that we have no option but to figure it out.

He's basically saying the state is doing this.

We're not engaging on this question of top-down, deciding whether to stop growing or not.

We're adapting.

We're figuring it out, and that's the same sentiment I heard from other officials in

Arizona too.

What that means is the decision about whether and when Arizona stops growing is left to

people voting with their feet, considering the cost of water and deciding whether to

move to Arizona or not.

So far, that demand isn't going away.

The thing that grabs me with this pipeline idea is that, yes, on the one hand, it's a

perfect continuation of that history of Arizona, that ethos of Arizona.

On the other hand, in the face of climate change, it's maybe appropriate to at least

ask, well, for how long can you keep on building your way and engineering your way out of reality?

In the short term, if this pipeline is built, it means that the water will flow, growth

will continue, despite the costs, environmental and otherwise.

And if you can afford it, you can come, right?

So again, a huge water infrastructure project is moving the goalposts of what's possible

and forestalling really an existential reckoning about whether more and more people should

continue coming to live in a desert.

That's right.

And that's why Arizona is really at the forefront of dealing with this groundwater crisis.

They're trying to engineer their way out of it.

And in a sense, that's the history of humanity inhabiting the earth and extreme areas in

the earth and building their way around those limits and those constraints.

That's sort of what we do.

The question here is, can we do it forever?

And will climate change impose some sort of new limit that means you've got to shift away

from building your way out of those problems and instead say, well, maybe there's some

areas where it doesn't make sense to keep on building.

So bottom line, is this going to happen?

You know, I'd take Chuck at his word.

He said that probably at some point, some version of this plan will happen.

Some version of getting desalinated water from Mexico is likely because that demand for

now in Arizona isn't going away.

And for the moment, there's no other formal options that have been presented.

There's a saying in water circles that water flows uphill to money.

And this would be one more case of water flowing uphill to money.

So it wouldn't surprise me if some version happens.

But what does it look like?

What does it cost?

Who suffers?

Will it work?

And for how long?

Chris, thank you.

Thanks, Sabrina.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you should know today.

On Thursday, a fire in a building in Johannesburg, South Africa killed at least 74 people,

including at least 12 children and injured dozens more.

Officials said the fire occurred in a five story building that was known to be a popular

site for squatters in a city plagued by a severe lack of affordable housing.

The fire was one of the deadliest in South Africa's history.

And in an unusual move, Justice Clarence Thomas included a statement in his annual

financial disclosure form, defending luxury trips, flights on a private jet and a real

estate transaction with Texas billionaire Harlan Crowe.

Thomas wrote that trips on noncommercial flights had been advised due to increased

security risk following the leak of the draft opinion in the Dobbs case.

He also argued that his past filings that had omitted luxury trips with Crowe were

proper, writing that he had, quote, adhered to the then existing judicial regulations.

He did, however, acknowledge errors in past reports in which he failed to disclose

personal bank accounts and his wife's life insurance, writing the the omission was inadvertent.

Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson and Will Read with help from

Alex Stern, Ricky Nevetsky and Carlos Prieto.

It was edited by Paige Cowett with help from Devon Taylor.

Fact checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Chelsea Daniel, Marianne

Lozano, Dan Powell and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansverk of Wonderly.

Special thanks to Rowan Moore-Garrity.

That's it for the Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernesey.

See you on Tuesday after the holiday.

Welcome back to our studio where we have a special guest with us today, Toucan Sam,

from Fruit Loops. Toucan Sam, welcome.

It's my pleasure to be here.

Oh, and, um, it's Fruit Loops, just so you know.

Uh, fruit.

Fruit.

Yeah, fruit.

No, it's Fruit Loops, the same way you say, studio.

That's not how we say it.

Fruit Loops.

Studio.

That's not how we say it.

Fruit Loops, find the loopy side.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.