Fifty miles south of the U.S. border, at the edge of a city on the Gulf of California, a few acres of dusty shrubs could determine the future of Arizona.
As the state’s two major sources of water, groundwater and the Colorado River, dwindle from drought, climate change and overuse, officials are considering a hydrological Hail Mary: the construction of a plant in Mexico to suck salt out of seawater, then pipe that water hundreds of miles, much of it uphill, to Phoenix.
The idea of building a desalination plant in Mexico has been discussed in Arizona for years. But now, a $5 billion project proposed by an Israeli company is under serious consideration, an indication of how worries about water shortages are rattling policymakers in Arizona and across the American West.
On June 1, the state announced that the Phoenix area, the fastest-growing region in the country, doesn’t have enough groundwater to support all the future housing that has already been approved. Cities and developers that want to build additional projects beyond what has already been allowed would have to find new sources of water.
State officials are considering whether to set aside an initial $750 million toward the cost of the desalination project, although Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has yet to endorse it.
“Desal in Mexico is a highly likely outcome for Arizona,” said Chuck Podolak, the state official in charge of finding new sources of water. Last year, lawmakers agreed to give his agency, the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, $1 billion toward that mission. He said whatever water project gets built “will seem crazy and ambitious — until it’s complete. And that’s our history in Arizona.”
Desalination plants are already common in coastal states like California, Texas and Florida, and in more than 100 other countries. Israel gets more than 60 percent of its drinking water from the Mediterranean.
The Arizona project would be unusual because of the distance involved and the fact that the state is landlocked. The water would have to travel some 200 miles, climbing more than 2,000 feet along the way, to reach Phoenix.
“We live in a world with gravity,” said Meagan Mauter, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and an expert on desalination. “The minute you have to move water around, you have huge fixed costs.”
The plant would allow Arizona to continue growing — but at a high cost.
It would flood the northern Gulf of California with waste brine, threatening one of Mexico’s most productive fisheries. It would carve a freeway-sized corridor through a U.S. national monument and UNESCO site, established to protect a fragile desert ecosystem. And the water it provided would cost roughly ten times more than water from the Colorado River.
In a sense, Arizona has been here before. The state owes its boom to superhuman-scale water projects, culminating in the 336-mile, $4 billion aqueduct that diverts Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. IDE Technologies, the Israeli company behind the new desalination proposal, has seized on that legacy, calling its project “an infinite and unlimited reverse Colorado.”
That message has found an audience. According to IDE, even before the announcement of a groundwater shortage, representatives from Phoenix and a half-dozen cities around it met with the company to learn about the project.
Environmentalists contend that instead of importing water from another country, the state should protect its limited supplies by having fewer lawns, fewer swimming pools and, maybe, fewer houses.
“What Arizona really needs to do is implement stronger water conservation,” said Miché Lozano, who until recently was Arizona program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. “The pipeline is just such a big, dumb idea.”
A nightmare version of Arizona’s future
The proposed source of Arizona’s salvation is Puerto Peñasco, a city of 60,000 an hour south of the border. From the ocean, the city is a ribbon of luxury villas and high-rise condos, fronted by soft beaches unfurling into turquoise water. Tourists from Phoenix, who make up the bulk of visitors, call it by its Anglicized name, Rocky Point; its unofficial moniker is Arizona’s beach.
But behind the glamour is a city of unpaved roads and low cinder block structures, covered in dust and sand blown in from the desert around it. A third of the population lives in poverty. Among its other problems: Puerto Peñasco can’t provide enough potable water for its own residents.
The city is a nightmare version of Arizona’s own future. Lacking surface water, it relies on underground aquifers, whose supply has dwindled as the population has grown. When tourism swells in summer,…
Read More: Arizona, Low on Water, Weighs Taking It From the Sea. In Mexico.