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May 02, 2019
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With its cactus-filled garden and breathtaking views of the rocky peaks of the Arizona desert, Wendy and Vance Walker's home in the Rio Verde Foothills seemed to be a little slice of paradise.
Until the water was cut off.
The neighboring city of Scottsdale decided it could no longer afford to sell its dwindling supply from the Colorado River, as a decades-long drought bites the American West.
For three months, the couple have eaten from disposable paper plates, had lightning-quick showers only every few days and collected rainwater to flush their toilets.
"A lot of people don't take the drought seriously," said Wendy, as she stood in the kitchen of their $600,000 home.
"And we, even though we live in the desert, we really didn't take it seriously either.
"Until you have to."
- Tankers -
Homes in fast-growing Rio Verde Foothills have never had running water -- there are no mains pipes -- so the 500 households without access to their own wells bought tankerloads from Scottsdale.
Most of that city's supply comes from the Colorado River, a mighty watercourse that rises in the Rocky Mountains and winds 1,450 miles (2,300 kilometers) through seven US states and Mexico, providing a lifeline for 40 million people.
But what was one of the world's great rivers has now shrunk.
Human-caused climate change means the once-bountiful snowpack that feeds the river has dwindled.
What snow there is melts more quickly because of higher temperatures, and more is lost to evaporation.
What does become river water is subject to a more than century-old agreement on who can take how much.
That agreement, made when it rained more and there were fewer inhabitants, was always a fiddle -- a political fix that allowed users to take more water than was added every year.
Now the federal government in Washington has told river users that the difference must be brought into balance: they must slash consumption by a quarter.
City managers in Scottsdale, faced with meeting their own targets, decided Rio Verde Foothills -- which they view as profligate development -- would no longer be able to buy their water.
On January 1, they closed the city's supply station to delivery drivers like John Hornewer, who says he now has to drive for hours to find enough water to fill his 6,000-gallon (22,000-liter) tanker.
He reluctantly doubled his prices to cover the extra cost of the gasoline and the overtime.
"We've become the first domino to fall and feel the effect of what a drought actually means," he told AFP.
"As water becomes more and more scarce, and it becomes more and more valuable, cities and communities are going to want to protect their own."
Public or private ownership
Arizona state officials stepped in last month to urge Scottsdale -- run by the Democratic Party -- to offer an accommodation to Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated settlement in Republican Party-run Maricopa County.
For a transitional period, Scottsdale would be allowed to buy additional water and -- for a cost -- reauthorize deliveries.
There was one catch: the county would have to cough up the cash.
Maricopa officials balked, and negotiations are stalled.
Ultimately, Rio Verde Foothills knows it will have to come up with a stable solution, and the town's residents are at loggerheads with each other over how to do that.
Scottsdale wants Rio Verde Foothills to establish a public body that will be able to plan for the long term, and will be subject to the same government rules as other water suppliers.
But well owners in Rio Verde Foothills say such a body would effectively be sucking their water out from underneath them and redistributing it to others. Why should others get what we have paid for, they ask.
- 'Drunk on growth' -
The uncertainty was too much for Lothar Rowe, a German immigrant who has 50 horses on a ranch in Rio Verde Foothills, where he has lived for two decades.
He splashed out $500,000 for a piece of land with its own well -- good for as long as the aquifers are.
"I can't believe it," says the 86-year-old.
"We're talking about the United States: they went to the Moon, they're trying to go to Mars, and they have no water here."
Fellow resident Rusty Childress said the problem stemmed from head-in-the-sand development.
"The issue from the very beginning was that we were all in denial," the 64-year-old told AFP.
"Nobody really thought this was going to happen."
Childress, a photographer, says developers exploit legal loopholes and continue to build in the area, despite not being able to guarantee the luxury homes they sell will have water.
"Buyer beware! No water in Rio Verde," reads a sign he put up in front of his house warning people who come to tour the half-built housing estates nearby.
"We're getting drunk on growth here," he says.
"But we can't have out-of-control growth with a real water issue."
© Agence France-Presse
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CNN's Don Lemon reported on Monday that prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia are weighing slapping former President Donald Trump with racketeering charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
According to Lemon, a source familiar with the case said that "prosecutors are considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges" against Trump after he tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the nearly 12,000 votes he'd need to overtake President Joe Biden's lead.
In addition to Trump's infamous call with Raffensperger, Lemon said, prosecutors have been looking at other calls, emails, text messages, and other documents to build a legal case against the former president.
"This underscores the idea that the push for Trump was not an organic grass roots effort that started inside of the state that... possibly others who are involved, much bigger people who are involved," Lemon said. "Investigators have at least three recordings of Trump pressuring Georgia officials."
READ MORE: John Oliver mocks Trump's indictment-panic on display in a message to farmers
Lemon went on to explain that racketeering charges would allow prosecutors to make the case that Trump and his allies were part of a "criminal enterprise" and thus open the door to charges against multiple defendants.
Watch the video below or at this link.
Georgia weighs slapping Trump with racketeering charges www.youtube.com
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COLONIAL HEIGHTS — When Glen Sturtevant stood to speak to diehard gun rights supporters gathered at an American Legion post last week, he knew he had some explaining to do.
A former state senator with a moderate profile who is trying to make a political comeback in a more conservative district, Sturtevant opened his remarks by telling the crowd he had cast some votes he “regretted.” Supporting a proposed red flag law in 2019, he said later in Thursday’s candidate forum hosted by the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, was “a mistake.”
“At the time we thought it was a way to try to stop some of these shootings by mentally ill folks,” Sturtevant said, noting that both former President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association had expressed support for red flag laws as a general concept. “We’ve seen since that it is abusive and bad policy.”
Sturtevant’s vote for a red flag law, an idea that didn’t pass in 2019 but was enacted in 2020 once Democrats took full control of the General Assembly, has been an early sticking point in what’s expected to be one of the liveliest Republican primary battles of 2023.
Both of Sturtevant’s GOP opponents in the suburban Richmond district — firebrand Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, and nonprofit leader and former congressional candidate Tina Ramirez — have used the issue to attack Sturtevant, highlighting the electoral risks for Republicans who express any support for limitations on gun rights.
Sturtevant, Chase and Ramirez will face off in a primary on June 20. The district they’re competing in leans Republican, covering a large swathe of Chesterfield County and the city of Colonial Heights.
At the VCDL forum, all three candidates said they would vote to repeal Virginia’s red flag law.
“I don’t have any votes that I need to apologize for, though I do appreciate the apology,” Chase said. “I have a 100% VCDL score, 100% of the time.”
Ramirez said she believes the law, which allows authorities to temporarily seize firearms from people deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others, violates both the Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“Anyone that would support this kind of legislation isn’t only not a conservative, they’re not a constitutionalist,” Ramirez said.
Over more than an hour of questioning from VCDL President Philip Van Cleave, all three candidates repeatedly said they’d work to repeal gun control laws Democrats passed in 2020 and support a so-called constitutional carry law, which would allow Virginians to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
All three said they support lifting restrictions on regular citizens owning fully automatic machine guns. Federal law prohibits civilian ownership of machine guns made after 1986 but includes exemptions for machine guns legally owned prior to that year. Both state and federal law require machine guns to be registered with government agencies.
Raising the specter of war with China, Chase said “we as Americans always have to be ready to go to war.”
“I want to have what they have,” Chase said. “Because I’m not gonna go with a knife to a gunfight.”
Ramirez said people should be able to choose whichever type of firearm works for them.
“Sometimes it’s actually really nice to have one that shoots all over the place if you don’t know exactly how to shoot the target as well as you would like,” she said.
The three contenders also backed the idea of automatically restoring gun rights to people with felony convictions once they leave prison.
“That’s something that I’m going to champion,” Sturtevant said. “When a person has paid their debt to society, and they have done their sentence, they need to get all their rights back, including their gun rights. We’re not gonna pick and choose what rights the state is willing to give back to you.”
Under current law, felons who have had their voting rights restored by a governor can petition a court for restoration of their firearm rights, with an opportunity for prosecutors to object if the requester has a history of violence.
The candidates all expressed broad opposition to location-specific restrictions on guns. But they differed in their responses to questions on how to handle guns in schools.
After Van Cleave asked if Virginia should follow Utah’s lead and allow concealed carry permit holders to take guns into schools, Sturtevant, who formerly served on the Richmond City School Board, said he supports Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push for armed police officers in every school. But he said he believes it should be up to local officials to decide who should be allowed to have guns in school buildings. Chase and Ramirez disagreed, saying teachers and others should be allowed to have firearms to protect themselves and students.
“Whether you’re a teacher or a coach, no matter who you are, you should be able to carry,” Chase said.
Asked after the forum if she thinks gun-carrying privileges in schools should also extend to students who are 18 or older, Chase said she sees the situation as no different than allowing 18-year-olds to serve in the military.
“If they’re reckless with it, they can lose that right,” she said. “We do have responsible 18-year-olds.”
Sturtevant was the only Senate Republican who voted for the initial bill creating a red flag law when it was put to a committee vote in 2019. The bill failed to advance out of that committee in a 7-7 vote. When the red flag legislation that ultimately passed came to the Senate floor the next year, no Republicans supported it.
Republican lawmakers, including Chase, have filed several bills to repeal Virginia’s red flag law, but those efforts have been unsuccessful due to the Democratic majority in the state Senate.
Sturtevant was one of the most imperiled Senate Republicans in 2019, a year when the suburban anti-Trump backlash delivered Democratic majorites in both General Assembly chambers. Sturtevant lost his seat to Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, in one of the most expensive races of the 2019 cycle.
In interviews after the forum, both Ramirez and Chase said they think Sturtevant’s 2019 vote shows his willingness to compromise on what they see as a core issue for conservatives.
“If you couldn’t trust him then because he was willing to compromise his values to get reelected, then why should we trust him now when it’s a more conservative seat?” Ramirez said.
In an interview, Sturtevant said his change of heart on red flag laws came about when he realized there was “too much of an opportunity for abuse.”
“It allows the taking away of a constitutional right without due process,” he said, emphasizing his legislative record as a whole was broadly supportive of gun rights.
In his closing remarks to the VCDL crowd, he pitched himself as the most electable candidate in a race Senate Republicans can’t afford to lose if they want to give Youngkin Republican majorities for the final two years of the governor’s four-year term.
“We cannot mess around,” Sturtevant said. “Because we are not guaranteed another Republican governor in the next gubernatorial election.”
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