Election Day is just two weeks away, and the high-octane race for president is consuming almost all the media’s attention. Perhaps nowhere is the election intensity higher than in Arizona, Jake Bittle writes for Grist:
I visited the Grand Canyon State during an unseasonably hot week in early October, when temperatures were still cresting into the triple digits every afternoon. I found that the frenzy of national politics has pulled attention away from the issue that is perhaps most important to Arizona’s future: water. Thanks to a millennium-scale drought fueled by climate change, the state has lost a huge share of the water it gets from the all-important Colorado River, and groundwater aquifers are falling in rural farm areas as well as in big cities like Phoenix.
This fall’s election will determine how the state tackles this crisis. If Democrats take control of the legislature, they’ll impose strict rules on water usage by farms and developers, which they hope will ease the state’s water shortage even if it raises costs for the agriculture and real estate industries. Republicans will opt for easier rules, or no new rules at all, which many experts fear could lead to more wells going dry in suburbs and rural areas near big farms.
