Mort Rosenblum: One global and local priority that's not optional is water

FLAYOSC, France — I keep trying to write about today’s world woes, but my fingers insist on taking me back to Tucson. Arizona is a telling microcosm of what needs to be put right. And far too few people are thinking globally to react locally.

Earth has begun to slough off humans like dead snakeskin. We need priorities. Most are optional: from a satisfied soul to half-court seats at a Wildcats game. Water is not.

A few recent pieces in the Star made my toes curl.

Hudbay Minerals in Canada is nearing a final permit to savage the Santa Ritas after decades of sustained onslaught. That is tragic for so many reasons, but the worst is water. Copper mining needs vast amounts of it.

Rich ore reserves in South America, Africa and Asia are far from populated areas. Copper can be more efficiently used to meet new demand. But it is easier and cheaper to devastate Arizona, then bank profits abroad.

Open pits impact aquifers, draining rare wetlands and affecting municipal water supply. Evaporation and pollution take a heavy toll. When ore beds are depleted, water keeps filling those gaping holes, continuing to vanish fast under a baking sun.

Exchanges with other management areas are no answer. Endemic drought increases steadily, and groundwater levels drop. Desalination can’t produce enough to meet agricultural demands. Only so much water remains, and everyone needs it.

Which gets to another story.

In 2014, Reveal, a nonprofit in Berkeley, reported that a subsidiary of the Saudi dairy company, Almarai, paid $47.5 million for 9,800 acres of La Paz county desert to pump water exempt from strict limits and regulations placed on urban centers.

It trucked alfalfa bales to Long Beach, then shipped them in containers half a world away to feed cows so that families had enough milk and ice cream. Saudi Arabia emptied its own aquifer decades ago in a bizarre wheat-growing venture.

I hurried up to nose around, the first of a half-dozen trips. News organizations I normally deal with weren’t interested. The story, editors told me, had been “broken.” It hadn’t; its surface was only cracked open. Reporters needed to keep at it.

Only recently, it got to be big news. That triggered state investigations of other dubious deals, flouted restrictions and such. By then, incalculable amounts of water had been lost, much of it at near-giveaway rates.

Middle Eastern and Chinese companies bought land to exploit depleting groundwater near the Colorado River in California as well as Arizona. Farmers found wells run dry as levels dropped.

Tony Davis just reported what Kris Mayes, state attorney general, told him could be the biggest water deal in Arizona history. She said not a single public comment session was scheduled to scrutinize it.

Water Asset Management LLC, a New York hedge fund, paid $100 million in cash for farmland (read, water rights) across nearly 20 square miles of La Paz County, not far from where Saudis planted their alfalfa.

Mayes said that after those foreign deals, Wall Street is swooping in with the clear intent of selling water to Phoenix and environs “so they can continue to grow in an unfettered way.” Think Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.

La Paz was originally hived off as a separate county to make it easier to sell water to wealthy parts of Maricopa. Reporters sniffed out potential scandal, officials backed away and the Saudis moved in.

In yet another story, about the border, the water angle was not evident. But drought and parched fields in much of the world loom large among factors that impel desperate families to reluctantly leave their homes.

Emily Bregel covered Donald Trump’s brief stop at Coronado National Memorial, where in 1540 the first Spanish-speaking immigrant entered what is now the United States without a visa. Trump cut through complexity.

“We will seal the border, stop the invasion and launch the largest deportation effort in American history,” he said. Otherwise, he added, the country would “wither away and die.”

Emily reported the crux of Trump’s words:

“When I left office I gave Kamala Harris the strongest and most secure border in American history. Then Kamala came in and dismantled every single Trump border policy and halted all wall construction.”

Then she layered in truth, with clues for fair-minded readers to see a bigger picture.

The system, if strained, functioned during the Obama-Biden administration. Trump created a calamitous backlog by closing off entries. He slashed foreign aid to help people stay put. He blocked climate accords meant to protect arable land.

The much-touted wall is a chimera, an easily penetrated waste of money that destroys fragile land. Harris’s brief was not to police the frontier but rather attack root causes of migration, such as helping water-stressed farmers and fruit growers to survive.

Clearly, there is much else to worry about. Israel-Palestine, for instance. Yet even there, water underlies conflict. The Sea of Galilee is a foot above the level where pumping should stop. Saltwater infiltrates Gaza’s polluted, diminishing aquifer.

Years ago, I co-taught a University of Arizona course on environmental reporting. Students compared the Colorado River to the Jordan, which had flowed deep and wide since biblical times.

The Six-Day War in 1967 was partly because Arab neighbors wanted more Jordan water. As populations grew and the climate changes, tributaries suffered. Now, at times, in some places you can walk across the river just by stepping on the rocks.

Arizonans, at the bottom end of the Colorado, ought to take note.