Tucson approves plan for $86 million treatment facility turning wastewater into drinking water

Tucson officials are moving forward on a plan to create southern Arizona’s first water treatment facility that turns wastewater into drinking water.

Tucson City Councilmembers voted to approve a proposal to use some $86 million worth of Bureau of Reclamation funding to build the new treatment facility and save Colorado River water as a result.

Tucson Water Director Jon Kmiec says things began about 16 months ago, when the water utility asked the agency to fund an advanced water purification plant in Tucson’s northwest side.

“Already treated water from Pima County Wastewater Reclamation — the recycled water that gets released to the environment, to the Santa Cruz River — [we] take that water and treat it even further,” he said.

Kmiec says the water will be treated in three different phases to reach drinking standards. It’s expected to save 56,000 acre feet of Colorado River water over the next ten years. In another agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, Tucson has been leaving some of its river share in the system each year in exchange for $20 million from the agency. That agreement has been renewed another year.

Kmiec says the plans as Reclamation works to conserve river water ahead of new Colorado River negotiations in 2026.

“That’s why the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was looking for projects that will at least assist communities to diversify their water portfolio so they become slightly less dependent on the Colorado River in the future,” he said.

Planning and design for the plant will happen over the next few years and should be ready for operation by the early 2030s.