Phoenix Rations the Tap as a Reservoir Drops to a Marker

PHOENIX — The white ring on the canyon wall above the Salt River reservoirs is now wider than the water it measures, and this week the utility began the rationing it had promised only as a contingency. Household draw is capped at 140 liters a day per person, enforced by meter, with agriculture and cooling towers cut first. The Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly logged the basin at 23 percent of capacity Friday, its lowest July reading on record, against a global mean anomaly holding at +2.8°C for a fifth straight month. For Marisol Vega, who runs a two-chair barbershop off Van Buren, the cap is arithmetic she already knew. "You learn to shave a man on half a basin," she said, tilting a jug. The city insists the measures are precautionary and temporary. The marker on the rock, indifferent to the adjective, keeps climbing.