Numlock Sunday: Eileen Guo on what it takes to bring surfing to the desert
By Walt Hickey
Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to Eileen Guo, who wrote “The cost of building the perfect wave” for MIT Technology Review. Here's what I wrote about it:
The hottest new trend is constructing large wave pools in the middle of deserts, with developers spending tens of millions to build the large pools in places like Arizona and California. Of 162 surf pools built or announced, 54 are in areas with high or extreme water stress. The water stress is a real thing — one 14-acre wave pool in Lemoore, California, can lose up to 250,000 gallons of water per day to evaporation alone — and a proposed surf park that could hold 7 million gallons would still use 24 million gallons per year due to water loss. A 20-acre recreational lake, 3.8 acres of which are a surf pool, would use 51 million gallons per year according to Riverside County. In the Coachella Valley, those in favor argue that building a wave pool in the desert is s…