Arizona Community’s Water Supply Shut Off – Are There Any Safe Places to Retire?
Category: Best Retirement Towns and States
January 17, 2023 — The search for a safe place to retire is challenging, as the community of Rio Verde Hills just found out. Up until recently, it received its water from neighboring Scottsdale. But due to concerns that it wouldn’t have enough water for its own residents, Scottsdale cut off the water it was supplying to Rio Verde Hills on Dec. 31. Residents there are understandably upset, as they now have to pay for water to be trucked in from increasingly farther away. Not only are water bills escalating fast, but residents are concerned about their ability to keep animals, along with having to reduce all but the most essential water use.
Is any place to retire safe?
The Rio Verde story makes it even clear that almost every area of the country faces serious climate and environmental risks. While Florida residents have plenty to worry about with coastal flooding and hurricanes, water shortages and wildfires are equally dire threats in the American West. The Midwest faces extreme weather like tornadoes, the West has earthquakes, and the Midwest and Northeast have ice and snow storms, not to mention flooding. Almost everywhere is experiencing record high temperatures and weather extremes. If that wasn’t enough, other areas of the country have sinkholes and volcanoes. It seems like nowhere is safe!
Comments on "Arizona Community’s Water Supply Shut Off – Are There Any Safe Places to Retire?"
Daryl says:
Here’s one of the articles that fried me about water in Arizona—foreign companies draining American aquifers: “Why are we allowing a foreign company to come into Arizona – which is drought-stricken right now – and have a sweetheart deal [on leases], when we are trying to conserve as much water as we can?”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/us/arizona-water-foreign-owned-farms-climate/index.html
I’ve read articles about Florida’s water problems of aquifers being drained, too, causing sinkholes, poisoning with saltwater, on top of sea level rise and the gift of hurricanes. Well, so far here in western PA we’re not too wet or too dry, but can’t brag while being slowly fracked and now cracked to death. So you pays your money and you takes your choice.
JoannC says:
If I lived in Arizona, this would fry me too. Until enough Arizonans are sufficiently concerned about this practice to elect legislators who will enact laws to limit foreign investors who indirectly drain their water supply, this will continue. I feel similarly about almond growers in California who export product abroad (when I lived overseas I found a 20 pound bag of California almonds at my local Auchan for less than I would pay here) and about Nestle, which takes water from California streams and bottles and sells it elsewhere. When I mention this to people they say "oh, but the tax revenues California gets from these sales." Seriously, I'd rather have my water so that I don't have to worry about conserving every drop that comes out of the tap. I also know enough about tax planning to know there are clever ways to divert the revenue to other tax jurisdictions.
ksw says:
I live in Phoenix metro where water usage is lower than it was in the 1950s due to conservation efforts and a shift away from flood irrigation for agriculture to typical residential use. There is a lot of drama about water availability. If you live in the metro areas with city services, you have no problems and water costs are actually reasonable. The community of Rio Verde has 500-700 properties which were sold without city water. Real estate listings show "hauled water" in the facts. Hauled water and shared well properties sell at significant discount to similar properties with city water. Take a look at your utility bill each month. You pay a sewer and a water charge. These properties never paid an impact fee for development which would have funded hooking up to city services. These properties can search out other water haulers in the area and pay a market rate or drill an expensive well. Scottsdale sent out a rebuttal to Rio Verde and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts. There are many water companies in the metro including for profit companies like Epcor. Epcor would love to have their existing customers fund their expansion beyond the Valley and have seen pushback by communities like Town of Paradise Valley which thinks new developers and communities on the outskirts need to fund their own utility services. Developers have played games by buying up small parcels and getting approval for development and then combining them into larger projects which wouldn't have been approved since they require 100 year water studies. Every prospective homeowner needs to read the documents before buying a property.
Bill says:
The article should be titled "Are there any safe places to live"! As a safe place to live prior to retirement is perhaps even more important! I was employed in the NW, which is one of the safer areas to retire, thus I was able to experience living there prior to retirement. My 1st hand experience of the NW's environmental risks reinforced my decision where to retire within the NW. Case in point, though it is beautiful to live amongst the magnificent old growth trees, one soon learns such areas can be at risk of forest fires! Some areas in the NW can also be prone to flooding, thus my earlier experience taught me its best to live on slightly elevated terrain (>200 ft above sea level) since rivers can be prone to overflow, and low-lying terrain can be vulnerable to rain-water accumulation and flooding!