> Generally speaking similarly sized homes in Boston will consume more energy for HVAC than Phoenix will simply because heating homes in cold winters is often more energy intensive than cooling in the summer.
This is true, and I definitely agree that the majority of the work to match consumption with water availability lies in the hands of agriculture.
With that said, it's important to recognize that the CO basin states (AZ, WY, UT) have some of the highest per-capita domestic water use figures in the nation - far above the national average.
Not sure about the other two, but it might be the ubiquitous swimming pools in AZ. The evaporation in an AZ pool during the summer is dramatic. You need to have a pool water leveler on 24/7 or leave the garden hose trickling constantly.
While somewhat common, I wouldn't use the term ubiquitous... When I grew up in Casa Grande, I didn't know anyone who had a pool, and most of my friends and I would ride our bicycles several miles to the public pool. My grandmother's neighborhood in Phoenix had two houses in a couple blocks that had pools. The street I live on today has two houses (of a couple dozen) that have pools.
There are more wealthy neighborhoods where it's closer to 1 in 4, but again wouldn't call that ubiquitous at all.
That said, I think that some of the farming use is excessive and should lean into regenerative agriculture over the more wasteful use of chemical fertilizers and desertification over time only taking away and eroding soil.
In my very middle class suburban neighborhood in Gilbert, you are definitely an outlier if you don’t have a pool. If I look at an aero google map of my street and the street on both sides of mine there are 18 houses out of 91 that don’t appear to have pools. A few of them have so much tree cover that I can’t tell if there is a pool or not so I counted those as a no.
Define middle class here... The median income for 2022 in Arizona is $38k/yr, your neighborhood is most likely well within the top 10% of income earners in the state. Most people don't get that.
No offense, but Casa Grande was, until recently, a modest farm town with modest incomes. Ag labor just doesn't pay that well and pools are expensive.
In contrast, here's a random middle class neighborhood in central Phoenix[0], the fifth most populous city in the US of A. You'll notice some of the streets have a pool in every single backyard. When you zoom in on the higher income neighborhoods, like in Scottsdale and PV, it's rare to see a backyard that doesn't have a pool.
MOST people don't grow up in higher income neighborhoods. While it may seem odd to you, who probably makes well north of $100k/yr on your salary alone, let alone a spouse/partner... Most houses, in most of the Phoenix area don't have pools.
This is true, and I definitely agree that the majority of the work to match consumption with water availability lies in the hands of agriculture.
With that said, it's important to recognize that the CO basin states (AZ, WY, UT) have some of the highest per-capita domestic water use figures in the nation - far above the national average.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2017/1131/ofr20171131.pdf