Better-paying jobs bring higher costs. The prices of everything go up so at the end of the day, those higher salaries buy the same things they used to get at half the price. Meanwhile, the water has to be rationed, even with how long a shower can take.
Musk’s Massive Tesla Lithium Plant Hunts for Water in Drought-Hit Texas
(Bloomberg) — Twenty miles outside Corpus Christi, Texas — an area so dry the local water company distributes shower timers at high school football games — the world’s richest man is nearly done building a lithium refinery that could require as much as 8 million gallons of water per day.
Drought Levels
It’s always been dry in this hot corner of South Texas best known for its beaches and energy exports — but there’s even less water to go around today than when Tesla first broke ground in May 2023. The area’s drought status was just upgraded to stage 3 — urgent — meaning turning off non-essential water use across facilities and parks and adding new restrictions on washing cars, watering lawns and operating decorative fountains.
“They’re telling us to take shorter showers and turn the faucet off when we’re brushing our teeth,” said Marie Lucio, a resident of the nearby Lost Creek neighborhood. The area already has frequent problems with water quality, including low pressure and a milky-like tint, and she’s worried the area’s aging water pipes won’t be able to keep up with new demand like the Tesla factory. “We’re not equipped to handle getting water to these industries.”
When the story ends, I would not be surprised that the residents that have lived there for generations will be screwed and left with water that is either non-existent or with water unsafe to even take a bath with. The vultures like Musk will swoop down and buy the land at a fraction of what it used to be worth.
However, they did vote for Trump and his policies, so one gets his wishes granted.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 edition[