Comment by kevinpet 4 days ago
There's no problem with residential water use in Phoenix. There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.
The biggest problem seems to be parochial NIMBYs. People don't like that TSMC needed to bring in Taiwanese workers to staff up the plant. They are currently posting AI generated renderings of factories with billowing smoke stacks when talking about the proposed Amkor semiconductor packaging plant in Peoria.
> There are still farms that could be shut down if water is needed.
Wow, that's good, glad you clarified that.
I was worried there weren't any farms that could be shut down if water is needed.
Can you imagine a world where we can't shut down farms to produce 4nm chips?
I am just so glad we can shut down farms to produce chips.
Farms are useless, but chips, we need it for the control grid. I am just glad we are all on the same page.
Who needs food when you have 4nm chips.
At least the fabs can recycle the majority of their water. Unlike farms which use more than is needed and are likely producing animal feed for international animals.
I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?
> I get your point, but not all farms are created equal. Is it really so bad to shut down farms that grow feed for Arab race horses to produce computer chips?
That, I agree. I noticed a sibling comment also mentioned that. If the farms in question are of that kind, it is reasonable. I'd just like to object to the creation of a general sense of sacrificing farms for fabs.
Having water artificially cheap for agricultural uses is a mistake.
If you're concerned about food security, subsidize actual food that could go to people in some way, but let water hit a real market price.
Else, we end up subsidizing water for clever export and other uses we don't really want, and we remove any incentive for efficiency in water use.
> I'd just like to object to the creation of a general sense of sacrificing farms for fabs.
"I was wrong, but I think my comment was still right based on vibes, so I wasn't wrong after all."
Farms recycle the majority of their water as well. Just instead of it looping inside of a closed process it returns to the broader environment.
Water loss from evaporation and transpiration are inevitable, and run off is a large chunk of it. Nearly half of the water used in farming is lost, and some of that becomes run off that pollutes the environment and whatever bodies of water it reaches.
Arizona and California have outdated water management laws that basically mean that big agriculture gets free water.
Until recently Saudi Arabia was using these laws to grow alfalfa in the desert.
In California, water intensive crops like almond trees get free water.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/climate/arizona-saudi-ara...
Also see the Resnicks' water storage scheme for their almond/pistachio empire:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...
The report has a graph showing their farms consume more water then all LA homes.
"Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown."Yes, but... The way the law works is that the farms own that water. The state would likely have to use eminent domain and pay fair market value if they want to take it away. I have no idea what that would cost.
I think the reasoning here is to have the fabrication being done away from areas where a natural disaster might cause an issue. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no heavy winter storms with a ton of snow, etc. If you locate it on an elevated area with good drainage there won't be any problems with desert storms/flooding either.
> Water is only going to get scarcer in the west as climate change goes on.
Predictions are all over the place but the average prediction seems to say that at least half the US gets more water.
This is an extremely over-simplified take. It depends on entirely on what the farms are producing, their water efficiency, etc. Nobody would seriously suggest that people go hungry so that we can have more chips, so responding as if that's the actual suggestion is unwarranted.
The place is a desert. Growing crops in a desert takes a lot of water, as you might imagine. A smarter thing to do is to not try to grow crops in a desert where it needs so much irrigation. The US has plenty of non-desert land for growing essential crops.
Lots of the farms exist to provide year around salad. What is more important, year around salad or computer chips? Economically, for Arizona, the answer is pretty clear.
This is also why I laugh when people in wet areas talk crap about my state's water problem. My state's problem is your problem too buddy.
Also, eating raw salad veggies (lettuce in particular) is one of the best ways to get foodborne illnesses like E. Coli.
It’s also worth nothing that the TSMC plant is basically as far north as it’s possible to be while still counting as part of the (huge) Phoenix metro area. The vast majority of the 5 million residents of that metro area are nowhere near the plant and very unlikely to be affected by it in any way.