Arizona's bid for California water could run into political headwinds

But whether Arizona can get that water from a state that has its own serious shortages is a big question, and one project funded by an Arizona state agency last week was called "somewhat delusional'' by an environmentalist.

The leader of one powerful California water agency didn't go that far, but acknowledged that the approved project targeting "high flows'' on two California rivers would be very challenging to pull off — and not just from a technological perspective. He said that doesn't even consider the political fallout that would occur if it became known California was giving some of its water to Arizona.

The second project he called "creative and doable.''

The board overseeing the once-obscure agency known as the Arizona Water Infrastructure Finance Authority approved contracts Wednesday worth more than $7.3 million to develop initial plans for the two water projects. As many as five others, including three desalination plants, could be approved for initial study funding next month.

The agency known as WIFA was expanded in 2022 under a plan championed by the Legislature and then-Gov. Doug Ducey and charged with finding new water to import into Arizona. Ducey promised a $1 billion cash infusion to the agency, with as much as 25% to be spent on in-state projects and at least 75% on finding and importing new water supplies.

But the whole promised allocation never materialized, and the Legislature clawed back some of the funding that was provided, leaving WIFA with just $300 million to fund new water projects. The fund is expected to drop below $270 million in the current budget year. 

The effort is critical for Arizona because the state's groundwater supplies are overstretched and its allocation of Colorado River supplies has been substantially cut. On Friday, the federal government finalized rules that require additional cuts to Arizona's allocation, although they weren't as severe as feared.

Arizona is normally entitled to 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year but has been taking cuts of about 512,000 acre-feet in recent years. The state will now lose 760,000 acre-feet, dropping next year's allocations to just over 2 million acre-feet of water. About half is delivered to Phoenix and Tucson areas via the Central Arizona Project canal system; the rest is used by farmers and towns.

California faces its own shortages

California, meanwhile, is facing similar groundwater depletion and other shortages, including a smaller cut to its Colorado River supplies. Facing dropping groundwater levels, the state enacted a law in 2014 requiring creation of local groundwater management agencies and charging them with cutting use or recharging aquifers so they come into balance within 20 years.

That's led to a scramble to cut pumping and find ways to recharge depleted aquifers.

And Arizona isn't the first to try to tap any excess flow in the two California rivers: The State Water Board is processing "many pending applications on central and northern California rivers, where a party is working through the requirements to try to obtain a permit,'' according to a staff statement provided by a board spokeswoman. No details were immediately available.

California has also set a goal of finding as much as 9 million acre-feet per year of new water supplies. In Arizona, WIFA aims to import between 100,000 and 500,000 acre-feet per year of new water — an amount that may increase.

Both Arizona contracts were awarded to a subsidiary of Canadian water and infrastructure company EPCOR and its partners.

The first requires EPCOR and its partners to flesh out construction, partnership and financing plans to capture water flowing through the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers during flood years. That water currently escapes to the ocean through the rivers draining the Sierra Nevada mountains and flowing through the Central Valley to the river delta and eventually into San Francisco Bay.

The project targets as much as 100,000 acre-feet per year of water.

EPCOR proposes to capture that floodwater, send it down the California Aqueduct to groundwater storage projects in the southern Central Valley, and then pump it back into the aqueduct for delivery to Southern California water agencies. Those agencies will deliver it to homes and businesses in the region.

In exchange, Arizona would end up with some of the Colorado River water supply currently held by the Southern California water agencies.

The second EPCOR contract would examine the feasibility of a "toilet-to-tap'' project that would transform sewage from a San Diego-area treatment plant to drinking water standards, either through direct treatment or by letting it seep into the ground for later extraction as clean water. That clean water, mainly emanating from sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, would then be sent back to Mexico for municipal use.

In exchange, Arizona would get the rights to as much as 100,000 acre-feet a year of Mexico's Colorado River water supply, bringing new water to the state. One acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons, or enough to supply at least three average homes, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

During a presentation to the WIFA board, an EPCOR representative said the company had some initial talks with state and local officials about its plans, but did not identify which entities it spoke with.

Staff with both the California State Water Board and the California Department of Water Resources, however, said they were unaware of the proposal.

Eric Averett, who leads the Kern County Water Agency in the southern Central Valley, which is home to several groundwater storage districts and the largest water bank in the state, said he had not heard of the Arizona proposals. As general manager of one of the most powerful water agencies in the state, it's surprising he hadn't heard of the Arizona projects through EPCOR's outreach efforts.

It was Averett who called the San Diego-Tijuana sewage treatment project "creative and doable.''

"It seems like good water management, where they're taking wastewater effluent, and they're delivering it into Tijuana, and then they're taking, by virtue of this exchange, Colorado River (water),'' he said. "That is actually what I would define as creative, good water management, and that also may be the low-hanging fruit.''

Political outcry expected   

And while he said he would never call a project "laughable,'' Averett said tapping the two rivers would be a highly complex effort filled with regulatory and other pitfalls.

They include, at first, showing the State Water Board that there is actually excess water and getting the rights to it. Then there are environmental reviews and permits, getting partners to ship and store water underground, plus finding an entity to take it for eventual use and swap it for Colorado River rights, just to tick off a few of the challenges.

"So there's a very detailed and lengthy, what I'll call gauntlet, because at each stage, it requires partnerships, cooperation, these types of things,'' Averett said in an interview Friday.

"I would never say anything's laughable because with enough resources and commitment people are able to do some amazing things,'' he said. "But you have to acknowledge that the process requires a number of steps that take, in this case, years and maybe even decades to put it in place.''

Averett said he considers the excess water plan "a very low probability, high cost project.''

Arizona is aiming to get new water into the state within 5 to 15 years.

And all those technical and legal hurdles don't even touch on the political outcry that is likely to develop when it becomes known that Arizona is targeting water flowing down California's rivers.

"I may be completely wrong, but I see the political maelstrom of 'oh wait a sec, you're going to take water off the Sacramento or San Joaquin that is critically needed in the Central Valley for Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, and move it to Arizona?' '' Averett said.

" 'Over our dead bodies,' '' he said. "And so there's this political side that, when you add to the complexity that we've already discussed, makes it a very big stretch to ever politically get that water out of California.''

EPCOR's proposal says it can tap into excess flows during flood years using an expedited permitting system enacted in California after flooding in recent years and use it for groundwater recharge. In the past 20 years, the proposal said, five years yielded flood levels that could be tapped.

Its proposal said as much as 14.4 million acre-feet of excess water was potentially available from the two rivers during the 2023 high water year, although not all of that could be diverted.

Two longtime staff members at Friends of the River, an environmental organization that works to preserve and restore California's rivers, streams and watersheds and advocates for sustainable water management, questioned whether there was actually excess water or the political ability of Arizona to tap the state's water supply.

"If you define 'excess water' as well, in some years, water flows out of the delta in excess of the minimum salinity control standards and other water quality standards, then yeah, there's excess water,'' said Ron Stork, a senior policy analyst with the group, who has decades of experience working on both river protection and flood safety issues. "The question is, how do you capture the excess water?''

Competition for the water

Competition for the excess water is the other big issue, Stork said.

"Arizona is not the only people who are scrambling for water,'' he said, noting that the southern San Joaquin Valley alone has a 2 million acre-foot per year overdraft that must be addressed.

He also pointed to California's "utterly unattainable'' goal of finding 9 million acre-feet more per year of water.

"So Arizona's got some competition,'' he said. "So trying to squeeze more water out of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers, rivers are already pretty thoroughly squeezed, some would call it a fool's errand.

"I realize, however, that desperate people may do desperate things and try and roll the dice and hope that nature and the gods of the civil engineers can provide,'' Stork said.

Gary Bobker, Friends of the River's lead policy analyst and spokesman, was just as blunt.

"The point is that state of California considers itself to be facing severe water supply deficits for all purposes,'' Bobker said. "And the idea that you start banking water in California to ship it off to other states just seems kind of delusional.''

He said it seems like an insurmountable hurdle for Arizona to try to get California water when in-state interests are fighting over it.

Bobker also questioned whether there really is excess water available when the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta is under so much pressure. He called the aim to harvest flood waters "the Big Gulp theory'' and said it is a major risk.

That is because there will be a temptation to not only take water during flood years but in any years where flows may be higher than average, he said.

"We have overall overallocated river systems where environmental and water quality problems are increasingly severe,'' Bobker said.

"And then you start taking the few years where it's actually wetter and there's the potential for recovery (and) start taking water in all of those years, not just when it's super wet, but when it's wet at all,'' he said. "That is a very, very serious danger.''

The WIFA board acknowledged there were risks in their approved contracts, and noted that's one of the reasons they split each proposal into multiple phases. That allows them to walk away from a specific project if the early analysis shows they are not feasible before spending a huge amount of taxpayer money.

"It's just that we're giving ourselves an off ramp,'' said board member Ted Cooke, who leads the committee that helped develop the seven importation proposals.