Grid Life [Arizona]

[rebeccmeister]

This is my first time existing in the Greater Phoenix Suburb-o-Politan area where I have ready access to a motor vehicle.

The experience of this city from behind the wheel of a (not-so-large) automobile is so vastly different from the experience of this city on a bicycle, the bus, the light rail, and on foot.

It is two- and three-lane grid roads and traffic lights; a vague sense of terror while constantly jockeying for position among other vehicles; enormous, fast-moving freeways to nowhere.

Yes, it means everything in the far reaches is accessible, but by that very same token everything in the far reaches greatly loses its lustre.

I am sure the vast majority of the inhabitants living here are utterly unaware of this aspect of the poverty of their circumstances.

I biked to the Heard Museum yesterday, as much for the bike ride as for the museum (the museum is exquisitely wonderful). Oak Street is a well-worn groove in my mental map of the area, since it was the backup route while the light rail line got put in on Washington and the initial route we knew best for transiting between my house in Tempe and scrottie's house in Phoenix, before we discovered that the Grand Canal was superior and faster.

When I ride my bike to destinations in downtown Phoenix, arrival is an oasis.

The rate of construction of new townhomes and apartments out here continues to be incredible. I imagine the spaces being filled with the same sort of furniture and things as the place where we're temporarily staying. The place where we're staying is filled with the things that would be expected for conventional guest accommodations. Serviceable but impersonal. Do these spaces simply act as shells or cocoons for the inhabitants as they watch TV? Does short-term hedonism start to feel hollow after a point after the best restaurants and amusements have all been tried and the adrenaline rushes wear off? What happens after that? Children and families, hard drugs, or just numbness? Lives I struggle to imagine.

It is hard to keep images of the coal-fired power plants on the Navajo Reservation proximate in one's mind. You can pretend it's solar power if you'd like, but those plants are still very much active. It is hard to look at fountains and sprinklers watering sidewalks and remember that a thousand small things like these are siphoning down the Colorado River to nothing.

I suspect the agricultural fields will dry up first, although I could be wrong. When we crossed back over into Arizona from California, gasoline prices dropped by a full dollar, so in the short term it seems to me the throngs will continue to flock here and fill the streets and houses, not knowing how life could be different. Different certainly doesn't mean better - perhaps it doesn't actually get better than this. But I'm glad to remember the ways that I found to live out here, to know the possibilities.

Comments

[moodyduck]

I would have had to quit karate and lose my karate family if I hadn't bought a car there, which would have been unfortunate. Somehow I survived the poverty of my circumstances.

[rebeccmeister]

I can't remember - when is the last time you were out here for a visit? Prior to this trip I'd been gone 3 years and I'm amazed at how much has changed since then.

What was the travel to/from karate like for you?

[twoeleven]

It is hard to keep images of the coal-fired power plants on the Navajo Reservation proximate in one's mind.
The only one I can find that meets that description shut down just before the plague.

[rebeccmeister]

Huh! This says one of three generators at the Cholla station shut down in 2020:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/energy/2020/01/07/pacificorp-close-generator-cholla-power-plant-northern-arizona/2829342001/

There's also the Kayenta coal mine, found on this map:

https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=AZ

And as the description notes, a large part of the problem on the Navajo Reservation is that large corporations have come in to mine for resources without having anything even remotely resembling a feasible mitigation plan. And once those resources are gone, they're permanently gone.

I think it is very hard for most people to really imagine/appreciate the scale of these mining operations without actually going to visit them in person.

[twoeleven]

Is the Cholla plant on a Navajo reservation? The only one I could definitely find like that is this one, which is the one I meant. It made some news sources when it shut down because, like all major employers that shut down, it left a lot of people unemployed. In areas dependent on coal for jobs, this is a non-trivial concern.

In any case, between that and Cholla, ~2.6GW of coal-fired electricity shut down in Arizona since 2019. By comparison, the state generates 5.2GW from solar. (Though those aren't comparable, since coal-fired plants run more or less 24/7, but solar plants reach nameplate generation only for a few hours around noon, at most.)

[rebeccmeister]

Joseph City, AZ, location of the Cholla, is right outside of the Navajo Nation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_City,_Arizona

So technically, no, although I have to imagine any air pollution from the plant wouldn't stop at the border.

And yeah, these do provide jobs in places where there aren't a lot of ways to earn money. The solar plants have been getting built in other parts of the state.

[threemeninaboat]

My friend Jeff lives there. He's a drummer. He built a home studio and provides drum fills and tracks for bands remotely. He started it before the pandemic so he could be a SAHD, rather than tour, but I hope he did well for himself in the pandemic when indeed no other drummers had jobs but musicians were still making tracks.