Seems a bit extreme. Other parts of the US have significant problems to deal with as well. The west coast (earthquakes), midwest (tornados and drought), south (hurricanes) and northeast (snow) all have problems which cost lots of money (sometimes federal tax dollars) to deal with. You could call building in any of these areas a "mistake", but that doesn't really help solve the problem.

Yeah sometime those places get disaster aid, but the southwest is really the poster child of unintended consequences of government infrastructure spending. Those places would not exist without Herculean irrigation efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 19th century. As the result of these efforts cities rose up were they should not have, and when the water runs out those cities will be reclaimed by the desert.