Wampum

We've been off-line while traveling from the Rio Grande just west of Santa Fe to a camp west of Flagstaff to a camp on Colorado River at the Parker Strip a camp just north of Point Mugu. Our Friday, Saturday, Sunday trajectory.

We stayed at the camp on the Colorado River last February, and in the intervening months, all the grasss and shrub ground cover has been replaced with red earth, similar to what is used for clay tennis courts, but not so fine. A camp worker explained that the work had been done to reduce the camp's water consumption, though there are private golf courses and camps adjacent to this state campground, in exuberant shades of green, and as a direct result, the daily surface temperature of the camp was now some 20° greater than the unimproved areas. We spoke with a family that has been using this camp for 30 years for summer access to the Colorado, back when there wasn't even pavment. They run A/C in their tents and, like us, were visibly discomforted by the 115° temps, when the temp just off the new surface was 106°.

The net effect of this particular form of water reduction -- grade and pave -- increassed the camper consumption of 30 amp and 50 amp power to 90% of the camp's operating cost, the consequence of bumping up the summer persistent daily and nightly heat by more than 10°s. Eventually, either the camp will have to be closed to infants and small children when the actual solar and ground reflected and radient heat reaches some number, unless they have access to A/C, or local first-responders will start making heat injury calls into a heat-sink.

The Snowbirds won't be bothered by the pave-and-grade, just the locals who want to go to water in the Summer, and who how have the option of costing the State a million gallons per year less in groundcover and shade tree irrigation and enjoying a substantial increase in the heat, day and night, where they play, eat, mind their kids, read books, and sleep, or going next door to the private camps that run three to five times the day rate, and which cater to the better-off drink-and-drive boaters.

N.B. The reason Arizona isn't using reclaimed water, though the operators of the golf courses and highly watered private camps adjacent are, is that it would require water quality monitoring, which red clay and pavement do not.

It is an interesting trade-off. Take a parcel the size of a school sports field with Sonoran Desert temperatures. How much cooler is the peak Summer temperature for each 100,000 gallons of water used for ground cover and shade trees? How much additional electrical power is consumed to cool some density of standard mix of travel trailers for each 1° increase in the exterior temperature? At what temperatures for what body weights are heat warnings prudent?