Phoenix Pays Twice for Water as Desalination Costs Climb

PHOENIX — At the Tethys Hydrous Group intake north of the city, plant supervisor Marisol Vega watches a meter that never used to move this fast. The utility, which serves several of the water-scarce megacities of the American Southwest, says the per-liter cost of delivered desalinated water here has risen sharply over the hot months as reservoirs behind the old dams keep slipping toward dead pool. "We are moving water uphill from a coast that is hundreds of kilometers away, and we are moving more of it every week," Vega said, standing beside pumps that run against a global mean anomaly holding at +2.8 degrees Celsius. The city has not rationed — yet — but its water board has begun publishing the delivered price beside the tap, so a household in Maryvale can see, line by line, what a shower costs in a year the sky gave almost nothing back. Vega does not editorialize. She reads the meter, logs the number, and goes home to a garden she stopped watering in June.