In northern Phoenix, where the landscape is a mix of desert deserts and master-planned cities, the future of the city’s water system is evolving.
With climate change and drought to reduce the amount of water In the rivers and reservoirs that feed the nation’s fifth largest city, Phoenix is betting big on technology that can turn sewage into clean, safe drinking water. It will allow water managers to squeeze every last drop of the supply they already have at a time when they expect a reduction in pipelines from reliable sources.
“What we’re doing here in Phoenix,” said Max Wilson, the city’s water resources management consultant, “is really paving the way for what’s going to be a new norm for the next generation.”
The Cave Creek Reclamation Water Plant will soon adopt the technology that makes that innovation possible. Water officials are nearing a major construction project that will cost about $350 million and aims to send treated water to city pipes by early 2029.
On a weekday afternoon, city officials watched as water was poured into a large concrete tank. The plant is still far from operational, but the installation of water in the system – in this case, to conduct a leak test – marked a major step in the development of the rehabilitation center and brought one step closer to supplying water to households in the area.
The Cave Creek facility has been under development, in one form or another, since the late 1990s. It ran from 2000 to 2008, delivering reclaimed water to parks and golf courses. Then, local development near the plant slowed down, the demand for water dropped and the city mothballed the plant.
Nearly a decade later, as environmental regulators were creating new rules for water reuse, Phoenix canceled the Cave Creek plant and began making plans to bring it online once state law allowed recycled water to be used in the drinking supply. Now, a major upgrade at the Cave Creek facility puts Phoenix within striking distance of delivering reclaimed water to homes and businesses for the first time in Arizona history.
Wilson said the project comes at an important time, as state officials are proposing steep slopes to the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Colorado River water to the Phoenix metro area.
He said: “It’s a desert city’s job to get the best it can out of every drop of water it can get.” “Knowing that we have generations of leaders who have said that this day is coming and we need to prepare for it is part of why we’re able to withstand the scale and magnitude of the trauma that we’re talking about here in the next 12 to 18 months.”
The Phoenix water department isn’t the only one investing heavily in this type of technology, known as direct water use.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers water to 19 million people in six states, is building its own. a major water utility in the city of Carson, near Los Angeles. It is estimated that this plant will cost $ 9.4 billion, and it can provide water from 2035. Colorado, other cities. they are considerate their wastewater treatment methods after the government announced regulations to guide cities that want to install the technology.
The city of Scottsdale ran a pilot program with a wastewater treatment plant, but did not provide potable water. Scottsdale officers they “investigate” advanced water purification, which would allow them to do so in the future.
As Phoenix moves closer to bringing its utility online, city water leaders have stressed that the water is completely safe.
“This technology will allow us to produce fresh and clean water that we will produce anywhere in the city of Phoenix,” said Nazario Prieto, the city’s assistant director of water services. “The science fully supports this.”
Wilson said most of the city’s top water officials, along with other city leaders, live near the plant and will be among the first to drink recycled water once the plant comes online.
“We will drink this water because we trust it,” he said. “We know it’s safe.”
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