Arizona Scheming

Another sign that America's educational system has hit rock bottom and is now boring holes for blasting charges. Planning and preparation for the public good has been replaced with hubris and profit sharing.

Huge Water Park Planned for Ariz. Desert
MESA, Ariz. - By tapping rivers and sucking water from deep underground, developers have covered Arizona with carpets of Bermuda grass and dotted the parched landscape with swimming pools, golf courses and lakeshore homes.

Now another ambitious project is in the works: A massive new water park that would offer surf-sized waves, snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking -- all in a bone-dry region that gets just 8 inches of rain a year.

If these people who LIVE IN A DESERT can't read the writing on the walls then we as a country are indeed doomed. Turn it all back to the Injuns and the scorpions.

"It's about delivering a sport that's not typically available in an urban environment," said Richard Mladick, a Mesa real-estate developer who persuaded business leaders in suburban Mesa to support the proposal called the Waveyard.

It's about a fast talking businessman delivering something that is not needed that uses a scare commodity that is desperately needed to a bunch of people who even more desperately need a new set of brains.

Mladick, 39, said he wanted to create the kind of lush environment he remembers from growing up in Virginia Beach, Va., and surfing in Morocco, Indonesia, Hawaii and Brazil. "I couldn't imagine raising my kids in an environment where they wouldn't have the opportunity to grow up being passionate about the same sports that I grew up being passionate about," he said.

Thank God he didn't grow up in a gay bathhouse.

No citizens groups overtly opposed the project, but its water usage may raise questions in the future as the growing Phoenix areas struggles to replenish its vast aquifer. Arizona has been in a drought for a decade, and rivers that feed Phoenix and surrounding communities experienced near-record low measurements this year.

"Water is a scarce and valued commodity," said Jim Holway, associate director of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Good old Jim didn't finish his sentence, "Water is a scarce and valued commodity; therefore any snake oil salesmen who wants to put unrealistic demands on our water supply should be staked out on a fire ant hill."

This is the problem that occurs when an area is developed far beyond its capacity to sustain itself. Water management has been a problem here for decades and projects like this don't make it any better. Remember what happened in Florida when the aquifers dried up? They turned into sinkholes. The kind of area that produces this is known as "karst landforms," and Arizona is well known for these types of formations.