This Arizona agency is asking companies for a plan to import 100 billion gallons of water

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The Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona took the first steps last week to asking companies for plans to show they could import more than 100 billion gallons of water into the state.

The move comes as the authority has faced financial challenges. WIFA’s funding has been cut to less than half of its original budget after the state government had to make sweeping budget cuts.

The board is looking for other options after scrapping an idea to desalinate ocean water from the Gulf of California.

Any imported water would supplement what’s used by homeowners, industrial users and farmers.

Ted Cooke is a WIFA board member and says the panel is open to ideas.

"We want to have an open mind to innovative ideas that go beyond the obvious ones, And even the obvious ones have lots of potential regulatory, legal, political, permitting-type challenges," Cooke said.

The board is required by law to pull 75% of its water from out-of-state sources.

Chelsea McGuire, the authority’s assistant director, says the lack of funding has hurt its reputation.

"We have potential responders or potential partners that decide they don't want to partner with WIFA because the state of Arizona clearly isn't serious about this. The state keeps taking their money. They're not going to have what they say they have. We're not going to waste our time," McGuire said.

The board is looking at bringing in surface water from other states and reclaiming wastewater, and says it is open to other options.

What the board wants from the companies are not just meaningful of how these companies technically could bring water to the desert. They want to know the price tag.

One thing is for sure: It's going to cost more than Arizonans are paying now for the mix of groundwater and surface water that comes out of their taps. But the fact is that may end up being the only option as local water supplies are drying up and even the future of state's Colorado River allocation remains uncertain.

What WIFA is pursuing is what remains of a grandiose $1 billion plan by Gov. Doug Ducey to have the state desalinate water from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. That resulted in behind-the scenes negotiations by the WIFA board solely with Israeli-based IDE Technologies in a bid by the then-governor to have a deal inked by the time he left office in January 2023.

That all blew up when word got out and board members concluded they didn't have enough information.

At the heart of the problem is a convergence of several factors.

The obvious one is that Arizona is growing. And while some of the need for residential use can be met by retiring farmland, that isn't always an option.

Related to that is a recognition that groundwater is not an infinite resource.

Then there's the fact that the drought is putting less water in the Colorado River. And the state, which already has had its allocation reduced, is virtually certain to have to take future cuts.

Cooke said some studies have shown the total anticipated "unmet demand'' for the entire state could be as high as 5 million acre feet, with an acre foot being the amount of water that could serve two or three average families a year.

And a more focused study of the areas served by the Central Arizona Project showed projections of a need of between 100,000 and 500,000 acre feet within 10 years.

What's needed to make that work for any company ultimately chosen by WIFA, however, is having guaranteed long-term customers. And that turns on the billion-dollar question: How much are water users willing to pay.

The average monthly water bill for Phoenix is about $45 a month. It's pretty much the same for Tucson.

Multiply that out by 12 and you're talking $540 a year. That covers everything from producing and treating it to maintaining the system that delivers it to the door.

By contrast, estimates for desalination projects put the cost of treating and delivering an acre foot of water at anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 an acre foot. Even assuming conservative use of water and that three families can be served with an acre foot, that means adding anywhere from $830 to $1,600 extra a year to a water bill.

At the same time, there are other costly -- but less expensive -- alternatives being explored to increase the supply of domestic water.

One of the most talked about is "advanced water purification,'' sometimes more colorfully referred to as "toilet to tap.'' In fact, the state Department of Environmental Quality just published the draft rules for taking water which just a few days earlier had been flushed down the toilet and delivering it to water faucets.

It's already viable technology.

Scottsdale has a plant that is treating sewage to drinking water standards, though actually delivering it to people's homes will require a DEQ permit. And Phoenix is retrofitting one of its sewage treatment facilities to produce potable water.

Cooke noted that while the law authorizing WIFA to find water requires that 75% come from out of state, that still leaves room for it to be exploring options like this.

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