Water Scarcity Has Western Cities Cutting Deals

Two western cities with major water scarcity challenges have cut a deal to help them secure their supplies. Utilities are hailing the agreement as a sign of the kind of cooperation needed to help arid regions survive unrelenting drought conditions.

The deal between Phoenix and Tucson will allow the latter to store water from Phoenix. The agreement will significantly boost Phoenix’s water storage space.

“The agreement calls for 4,910 acre-feet of Phoenix’s supply from the Colorado River to be stored within the next year in recharge basins in the Avra Valley, west of the Tucson Mountains. Up to 40,000 acre-feet of Phoenix’s water could be stored there by the end of the decade,” the Arizona Daily Star reported.

The agreement in a nutshell, per the Daily Star:

The new agreement ramps up a 2014 pact that allowed Phoenix to store 850 acre-feet of its [supply] in the Avra Valley basins belonging to Tucson Water. In 2015, about 4,000 acre-feet of Phoenix water was stored there. Before the 40,000 acre feet can be stored, legal issues must be resolved and design work must be done on expanded recharge basins here, Tucson Water says.

The agreement benefits Tucson in the short term by raising its water table with recharged water. When future Colorado River water shortages become severe enough to impact cities — a prospect most likely five or more years away — Phoenix can take some of Tucson’s water as it comes down the canal.

At that time, Tucson would be able to use Phoenix’s water that was stored in its basins. Expanding Avra Valley recharge basins to accommodate Phoenix’s water will cost $20 million to $30 million, and Phoenix will pay for it.

Tucson and Phoenix officials say their agreement is a sign of the kind of cooperation that is necessary to help the region survive a relentless drought — the worst to hit the Colorado Basin in 1,200 years, the report said.

Tucson Water spokesman Fernando Molina weighed in.  

“The biggest benefit of the agreement is that we’re working with other communities to insure long-term water security,” he said. “It gets as much of this state’s allocation (as possible) into the ground in a way it can be used more effectively. A lot of Maricopa County communities have recharge capability, but not the infrastructure to recover it and get it out of the ground.”

Heather Macre, a Maricopa County representative in the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, said that cooperation between regional organizations “is going to be the solution as opposed to doing it on a state or agency basis,” Cronkite News, a PBS station, reported.

The agreement was unveiled as part of the White House Water Summit in Washington, D.C. Tucson Water Director Timothy Thomure was one of the experts in attendance.

“Thomure said the solution to many of the nation’s water problems will be found in partnership such as the water collaboration between Tucson and Phoenix,” Arizona Public Media reported.

"I’m expecting there to be quite a bit more of that type of thinking where cities are working together and working with Central Arizona Project in order to find flexible and creative ways to move water through the system and through the state," he said, per the report.

To read more about the ways that utilities are fighting persistent drought, visit Water Online’s Water Scarcity Solutions Center.