California state prison closure threatens desert town
Two things bring people here, prisons and water, and this tiny desert town is losing both. The locals interested in keeping Blythe afloat have ideas: They’ll build a logistics center, or they’ll develop better recreation opportunities on the Colorado River, or they’ll reopen their soon-to-be shuttered state prison as an immigration detention center. …Then there’s Blythe’s water, which feeds fields of alfalfa taken out of town by the truckload as bales of hay, and is increasingly going to large farm conglomerates. The Metropolitan Water District, which sends water to Los Angeles and other Southern California cities, pays Blythe farmers to leave their fields fallow as competition for Colorado River water gets increasingly desperate. So if there’s no prison and very little water, what becomes of this place?