Pipeline dreams: the desert city out to surpass Phoenix by importing water

Buckeye, Arizona, is eyeing ‘crazy’ ideas to keep growing, including piping water hundreds of miles uphill from Mexico

Arizona, stressed by years of drought, has declared its housebuilding boom will have to be curbed due to a lack of water but one of its fastest-growing cities is refusing to give up its relentless march into the desert – even if it requires constructing a pipeline that would bring water across the border from Mexico.

The population of Buckeye, located 35 miles west of Phoenix, has doubled over the past decade to just under 120,000 and it is now priming itself to eventually become one of the largest cities in the US west. The city’s boundaries are vast – covering an area stretching out into the Sonoran Desert that would encompass two New York Cities – and so are its ambitions.