Water planning comes with a cost
Phoenix wants to raise its water rates, in large part, to help it better prepare for the worst-case scenario on Lake Mead.
It is seeking $1.5 billion to drill wells, replace aging pipes and improve the way it transmits water around the city. Phoenix wants to be sure — should Lake Mead, which provides about 40 percent of the state’s drinking water, go into a tailspin and require even more drastic cuts — that it has the infrastructure in place to withdraw the unused drinking water and treated wastewater it has spent years storing underground.
That’s not an overreaction to a new, more-severe forecast. It’s what municipal water planners are supposed to do: Foresee the worst-case scenario and put plans in place to weather it years before they may ever be needed.
It’s all about reducing risk for residents. And make no mistake: The risk is real.
The hard truth is that seven states and Mexico are using 1.2 million acrefeet more than the Colorado River can provide each year. That’s almost four times as much water as Phoenix — the nation’s fifth-largest city — uses in a year.
Not surprisingly, Lake Mead’s water level is quickly dropping to unsustainable levels. There is now as much as a 1-in-5 chance of the lake falling below 1,000 feet of elevation — a prospect that wasn’t even considered possible in 2007, when Arizona and others agreed to take cuts to their allocations in times of shortage.
And that’s scary, because we only have agreed to cuts up until the lake hits 1,025 feet. If the lake falls below that, we’ll have to agree to even more-severe cuts — though no one knows how much or how quickly.
So, Phoenix, which has some of the lowest water rates in the nation, is asking for a historically modest rate increase — not quite $5 more a month for the average customer, once the rates are fully phased in by 2020 — to ensure it can recover water it has stored for exactly such a scenario.
It’s a no-brainer.
But it’s also a turning point. Because even though these upgrades aren’t new — Phoenix has been planning them for years — it is the first time that water scarcity and shortage have been a key part of the public debate.
It likely won’t be the last. And that’s a good thing.
I mean, no one wants to be alarmist. But residents need to understand the reality we are facing on Lake Mead — and that even if Phoenix-area cities are last in line to experience major cuts to this critical source of water, they must continue pressing ahead with plans to shore up their water supply.
Every municipal water provider has a tiered drought-preparedness plan in place, which would require increasing cuts to water use as shortages become more severe. That’s important.
But while conservation is a necessity — and cities should do more to encourage residents to save — it alone won’t be enough to get us through a water crisis.
Cities also need to diversify their water supply, so they aren’t overly reliant on any one source.
Most Phoenix-area cities began doing so years ago, long before the alarm was raised on Lake Mead, by storing a mix of conserved drinking water and treated wastewater underground. That’s smart, because unlike aboveground reservoirs, the aquifer doesn’t lose water to evaporation, and layers of rock and soil make an excellent filter for reclaimed water.
Each city’s approach is different (Scottsdale treats its water to better than drinking standards before storing it, for example) and some have saved more than others.
But the 10 Phoenix-area cities that comprise the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association — which represents more than half of the state’s population — have collectively stored more than 2.4 million acre-feet of water underground, enough to last about three years if that was their sole source.
As importantly, cities are beginning conversations on how to share water in scarce times or during emergencies, including adding the infrastructure necessary to move water among them when needed.
This is important planning that needs to happen. But it has — and will continue to — come with a cost. That’s the takeaway.
Water isn’t getting any cheaper for even the best-prepared cities to deliver. And water rates are going to reflect that, particularly as we move into an increasingly uncertain future.