Phoenix wasn’t on the recent list I posted about the cities most likely to experience a serious water crisis, but maybe it should have been. According to The Guardian:

Phoenix gets less than eight inches of rainfall each year; most of the water supply for central and southern Arizona is pumped from Lake Mead, fed by the Colorado river over 300 miles away…

That river is drying up. This winter, snow in the Rocky Mountains, which feeds the Colorado, was 70% lower than average. Last month, the US government calculated that two thirds of Arizona is currently facing severe to extreme drought…

The Phoenix area draws from groundwater, from small rivers to the east, and from the mighty Colorado. The Hoover Dam holds much of the Colorado’s flow in the vast Lake Mead reservoir, but the river itself is sorely depleted. That water has now dropped to within a few feet of levels that California, Nevada and Arizona, which all rely on it, count as official shortages. Lake Powell, the reservoir at the other end of the Grand Canyon, similarly averages half its historic levels.

Let’s review – snowmelt, rainfall, and groundwater all disappearing, and the city continues to grow.