Phoenix's Water Plan Echoes Ancient Society's Collapse | The Locally Times
City records show Phoenix was built on a 135-mile canal system left by a society that collapsed from drought, a history that now shadows the modern city of 1.6 million people.
## An Ancient Foundation of Canals Long before modern settlement, the land now known as Phoenix was home to a society that occupied the area between 700 A.D. and 1400 A.D., according to the City of Phoenix’s official history page. The evidence of their civilization is preserved at the Pueblo Grande ruins. These early residents engineered an irrigation system to make the arid land fertile. City records state they constructed approximately 135 miles of canals, drawing water from the Salt River to support their community. This network transformed the desert landscape, allowing for agriculture and settlement in a region with little rainfall. The scale of this water management system demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of engineering and hydrology that sustained the society for centuries. ## Collapse and Rebirth City historical documents suggest a prolonged drought led to the collapse of this ancient civilization and the abandonment of its complex canal network. In 1867, a settler named Jack Swilling surveyed the Salt River Valley and recognized its agricultural potential. According to the city’s history page, Swilling observed the rich, rock-free soil and concluded that water was the only element required to make the land productive for farming, echoing the work of the valley’s first engineers. ## A Modern Metropolis in the Desert Today, Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the United States, with a population exceeding 1.6 million residents. A city facts and statistics sheet shows Phoenix was the fastest-growing city in the nation between 2000 and 2010. The city now manages a yearly budget of $3.4 billion and maintains infrastructure that includes 4,850 miles of public streets and 41,000 acres of desert and mountain preserves. This rapid expansion into a major American city relies on complex water management, just as the ancient settlement did. The historical record of a civilization-ending drought serves as a backdrop to the city's current trajectory and its continued reliance on finite water resources. ## Future Sustainability Unspecified in City Records While city documents detail the region's ancient water history and modern population growth, they do not specify the policies that ensure long-term water sustainability. Furthermore, the public-facing documents that describe Phoenix’s rapid growth do not outline the specific water infrastructure projects or conservation strategies that underpin this expansion. The records lack current water consumption data or future projections and do not specify how the city plans to manage its resources in the face of the same environmental challenges that led to the collapse of the Hohokam.