Gov. Katie Hobbs defends Arizona "toilet to tap" efforts

Her comments come as the question of whether cities should pursue programs to produce purified water from wastewater has become an election issue in Scottsdale. There, a city council candidate is running on a program to kill the program, even making a campaign video featuring a brown-looking liquid and saying that's what people will be asked to drink. 

Hobbs countered, "It's irresponsible to spread the kind of misinformation that's being spread about technology that we need to continue into the future." 

She also took a poke at those who believe that what they are drinking right now is pure and untouched. "The fact is, most of the water that we get out of our taps in Phoenix comes out of the Colorado River,'' she said. "I don't know if you've been to the river at any time. But people recreate in there.''

That river water goes through a purification process before it comes out of the faucet, Hobbs said.

"This is no different,'' she said of what is known as "advanced water purification,'' though the process, approved by the Arizona Department of Water Quality, is far more intense and involves more steps, including additional filtering.

Discrepancies in funding claims

Hobbs was speaking Wednesday in Scottsdale at a formal celebration of the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. That program, operating out of Arizona State University, is designed to work with communities, industrial users, farmers and others to find new ways to help the state's water supply, from augmentation and desalination to conservation and reuse.

"We've taken action to get Arizona businesses the tools they need to grow alternative water supplies so they don't have to depend on groundwater,'' Hobbs said of the work being done there. She said that is why Arizona is "on the forefront of water-management solutions.''

"It's why I invested $40 million into the AWII,'' she told those attending the event.

Only thing is, it wasn't Hobbs who put that money into the program. It was her predecessor, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who set aside COVID relief dollars for it in November 2022.

So why did the Democratic governor, in the middle of her reelection effort, make that claim?

"I don't know the answer,'' she said when asked after the event.

After she left, some of her advisers sought to justify the claim.

"All of the work and the decisions that were made were made under the Hobbs administration,'' said Jennifer Loredo, a Hobbs policy advisor. And Patrick Adams, Hobbs' senior advisor for water policy, said that while the money actually was allocated by Ducey — one of a series of COVID grants he awarded in the last weeks of his administration — "there wasn't a water innovation initiative as a name.''

But that, too, isn't accurate: The 2022 press release from ASU said the university "will lead a multiyear Arizona Water Innovation Initiative to provide immediate, actionable and evidence-based solutions to ensure that Arizona will continue to thrive with a secure future water supply.'' It credited Ducey for providing the funds.

Still, Loredo said it was the Hobbs administration that sat down with ASU to work out "what are some of the priorities.''

She added another reason she thinks her boss can take credit. 

She pointed out that Hobbs, after taking office, rescinded about $210 million in grants of COVID dollars that Ducey had doled out in his last days in office. Those involved 19 grants to 16 organizations given out between Dec. 30 and Jan. 1. An attorney for Hobbs said at the time that those last-minute grants were illegal because Ducey had not used a competitive bidding process.

By contrast, Loredo noted, Hobbs left the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative grant in place. "We saw this as a good investment,'' she said.

But the funding wasn't one of those last-minute grants: The announcement came on Nov. 16, 2022.

Hobbs: "We have to trust the science"

Regardless of who gets credit, one of the subjects the program is designed to address goes straight to the heart of the debate about recycling. It comes as some Arizona communities are looking at the possibility of using treated effluent as they deal with the multi-year drought and cuts in water from the Colorado River.

State officials have done what they can to tamp down the "toilet to tap'' phrase. Initially it was being promoted under the name of "direct potable reuse.'' The Department of Environmental Quality, which has oversight of the regulations, finally opted for "advanced water purification.''

Randall Matas, DEQ's director of the water quality division, told Capitol Media Services when the agency was working on the rules that rebranding was based, at least in part, on testing what is acceptable to consumers. But that is just a small part of the story, he said.

"The main reason for the change is that it just more accurately reflects what this purified water is,'' he said. "We felt that 'advanced water purification' was a better description of what this is, that there's an advanced treatment system that purifies this water and provides that safe and healthy drinking water.''

Hobbs said Wednesday she's convinced.

"We have to trust the science,'' she said. "We have the technology to build the water resources that we need to go into the future.''

And, Hobbs added, she personally trusts the science.

Biggs: "So many better options"

There are political issues, however.

Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, who is challenging Hobbs in the governor's race, said he agrees that advanced water purification "is a potential route'' to increasing the state's water supply. But not necessarily the best one, he said.

"There are so many better options for Arizonans to augment the water we already have,'' he said in a written  statement in response to an inquiry from Capitol Media Services. One is desalination, he said. 

He would not respond to a question of whether he is willing to drink water produced through the AWP process.

Scottsdale backs off plans

Tucson, Phoenix and Scottsdale all started the process of putting advanced water purification systems online with the idea of supplementing municipal water supplies. That has taken on urgency as the state is losing a large chunk of its allocation from the shrinking Colorado River.

But the question has become a political issue in Scottsdale ahead of this year's city council race.

In May, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican former state lawmaker and now a candidate for the council, put out a campaign video with comedian Rob Schneider, also a Scottsdale resident, holding a glass of something that looks like chocolate milk.

"They want you to drink this, toilet to tap, you and your family to drink it,'' he said, pointing to the brown liquid. "Mmmm,'' Ugenti-Rita responded.

In June, Scottsdale ditched its plans to put more funds into the advanced water purification program, replacing it with a $100 million allocation for unspecified programs to come up with new water sources and supplies.

That leaves in place Scottsdale's practice of using wastewater — treated, but not to drinking water standards — for golf courses and recharge projects.

There hasn't been that kickback in Tucson, where the city said last year that it would build the region's first plant to treat wastewater to drinking standards by the early 2030s.

The more than $86 million to pay for construction costs of that plant is coming from the federal government. In exchange, Tucson would leave about 56,000 acre-feet of its Central Arizona Project supply of Colorado River water in Lake Mead over a decade.

The Tucson plant would supply only about 3% of the water the city delivers. That would be confined to the city's northwest side, where wells that had been supplying drinking water have been shut down due to contamination with PFAS compounds, known as "forever chemicals." 

A Phoenix project is advancing even faster, with an existing water treatment plant near Cave Creek and Deer Valley roads being converted to producing advanced purification water by 2029.