Phoenix Not Doomed to Evaporate in Scorching Sun

Valley

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What was missing for me from George Packer’s recent article on Phoenix and Maricopa County was any discussion of Tucson and Pima County, just 100 miles south. When it comes to political entities, these two neighbors couldn’t be more different: There is only one Republican on both the Tucson City Council and the Pima County Board of Supervisors, for example, and attitudes toward water and immigration are significantly different. Grass and water features are rare, and Pima County, which is actually on the Mexican border, is less subject to anger over immigration. The Phoenix-Tucson divide is not the only or best example of America’s divisions, but it is certainly worth exploring given the close geography involved. I would love to read a follow-up.

Bruce Skolnik
Tucson, Arizona

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George Packer’s extensive study of Arizona and its water restrictions has been missing a key element: the role of innovation in regulating water resources in ever-smarter ways. As new homes are built, Phoenix and surrounding areas are getting the chance to adopt new types of water-saving devices, garden designs, and swimming pools. These could play a key role in addressing the state’s water crisis.

The 37,000-acre Teravalis project Packer mentioned is one example. Teravalis will include infrastructure to collect rainwater for reuse, a facility to treat the community’s wastewater and reuse it in public spaces, water usage monitors, leak detectors, and strict lawn requirements to encourage natural landscapes that don’t need irrigation. All of the devices will be more efficient than what’s currently common in Arizona and around the country. Overall, the development promises to reduce water consumption by up to 35% compared to current standards.

When we consider Arizona’s future, the water news doesn’t have to be bleak. Israel has had a rapidly growing population in a water-restricted region for more than 75 years. Thanks to a range of new technologies and smart policies, people there are living water-rich lives not unlike those in New York or London, and that could be Arizona’s future, too.

Arizona has water—lots of it. What’s lacking is the creativity to use it to maximum effect. Instead of shying away from development in Arizona, let’s view the state as a laboratory for other places that face, or soon will face, the same constraints.

Seth M. Siegel
New York, New York

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While there is much to commend George Packer’s sweeping account of Phoenix and what the city’s dysfunction can teach us about America’s future, he makes a mistake many visitors and transplants make when discussing the city: buying into its founding mythology. Packer begins his article by saying, “No one knows why the Hohokam Indians disappeared,” and then goes on to describe how white settlers in the 1860s discovered irrigation canals left behind by their ancestral Sonoran Desert peoples and decided to reuse them, naming their town as a reference to “a lost civilization in the Valley.”

This founding myth has been retold for over a century, despite never having much to do with historical fact. The O’odham people of southern Arizona claim direct descent from the Hohokam (the name is a corruption of the O’odham word for “ancestor”). One of the first Americans to visit the area, a U.S. Army lieutenant named Nathaniel Michler, was amazed by the Akimel O’odham farms he observed around the Gila River, writing that they were “more advanced than anything we have seen since we left the Atlantic States” and included fields of “cotton, sugar, peas, wheat, and corn.” This was in 1855, some twenty years before Phoenix was founded just 20 miles to the north.

By framing his investigation with the ahistorical notion of Phoenix as a city inexplicably rising from the ashes of a vanished people, Packer allows the reader to think of it as an inherently transient place, doomed to evaporate in the scorching sun. A more instructive approach would be to engage with the full scope of Arizona’s history and confront the fact that people have found ways to live and thrive in the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years. Of course, generations of original Arizonans have lessons to teach us, if we can only force ourselves to listen.

Kyle Paoletta
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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I admire the distance and empathy with which George Packer interacts with the main characters in “The Valley.” But even at 77, I can’t quite empathize with the MAGA tribe, especially those who create their own chaos with their self-destructive values ​​and choices. “That was our civilization in the Valley, the only civilization we had,” Packer concludes. “Better there than gone.” Really? Is Phoenix’s madness what we have to look forward to? I hope not.

Carl Flowers
Olympia, Washington.

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George Packer’s thought-provoking article asks a common question: Why do people live in Arizona?

I’ve lived here for almost two years and can attest to his report. The state is ridiculous, expensive and, in many ways, completely untenable. As Packer noted, politics are bad, water is running dry and homeless people often have nowhere to go. When the thermostat reads 110 degrees or more for 31 days in a row, life gets pretty bleak. So why do we live here?

I don’t claim to know why anyone does anything. But sometimes, when I drive through parts of town where strip malls give way to rusty fences, this hum starts. And after you’ve been here long enough, you realize it never really stops. If you listen closely, you can hear it echoing in the mountains somewhere between dusk and daylight. Yes—there’s a pulse to this place, if you pay attention.

I felt it once at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, in that sedimentary cathedral; as I looked up, sweaty and wearing the wrong shoes, the only thought that came to this lifelong agnostic’s mind was: I understand why people pray.

I never want to leave.

Kallen Dimitroff
Phoenix, Arizona.

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George Packer answers:

Even in 25,000 words, it was impossible to say everything there was to say about the Valley. The region’s story has not been told since the 15th century, but the Hohokam’s disappearance remains a significant historical mystery. (I found space to mention their connections to the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Gila River Indian Community.) Tucson and Pima County deserve their own reporting, but my assigned target was north of them. I wanted to give space to the testimony of Trump supporters—nearly half the population—even if we disagreed. The region’s future, its contradictions, its fascinations, were topics on which everyone I met had strong personal views.

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Back of the Cover

For our cover photoBorrowing the visual language of old Ray Bradbury and Stephen King books, illustrator Justin Metz depicted a circus wagon approaching ominously toward a desecrated Capitol. Something bad is coming this wayBradbury’s 1962 masterpiece was particularly inspiring, the tale of Mr. Dark, who tricks strangers into joining his malevolent carnival. AtlanticIn ‘s 167-year history, it’s rare that we publish a cover without a headline or typography. The images speak for themselves.

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Background Story

“Anti-Rock Star,“Stephen Metcalf’s piece also includes an ink-line portrait of Leonard Cohen drawn by Bono. The cover of our June 2023 issue. Bono told us that Cohen celebrated his 79th birthday with him at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Over dinner, Bono asked Cohen if he had any plans for his 80th. “Oh yeah, serious plans,” Bono recalls Cohen replying. “I haven’t smoked for 23 years and there’s a cigarette maker in Jermyn Street in London who does wonders with Virginia Gold tobacco. One handmade cigarette would be a great pleasure for me.” Bono said he wouldn’t be able to attend Cohen’s 80th birthday, “but I’m embarrassingly proud to say I sent him a highly polished silver cigarette case.”

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Corrections

“Valley“ (July/August) Salt River Project misstated the amount of water held in its lakes. The lakes hold more than 650 billion gallons of water, not 650 trillion gallons.”The Wild Adventures of Fanny Stevenson(September) Misrepresented how Stevenson passed Panama in 1868.

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This article appears in: October 2024 The printed version of this article was titled “The Commons”. The printed version of this article stated that this issue’s cover could be the first. Atlantic‘s history, which has no title or typography. A reader has since directed us to: December 1954 coverA seasonal illustration by Frederick Banbery, without any titles or typography (but with a few top hats). Banbery had done a similar cover December 1953 issue.