Tucson residents to weigh in on already-approved large water user ordinance for the first time

Shortly after rejecting Project Blue, a large-scale data center, the city of Tucson last fall fast-tracked approval of its first large water user ordinance without a public hearing — city officials said it was important to get something on the books immediately.

Tucson Water has periodically met with a group of 42 local organizations, or stakeholders, for input on these rules for the past year. This ad hoc committee has put forward a list of revisions to the ordinance for the council to consider at a hearing Tuesday afternoon.

It’s the first time Tucson residents will have a chance to comment on the ordinance, and the committee’s recommendations for amending it.

The Watershed Management Group, an ad hoc committee member, says the utility’s revisions include few stakeholder recommendations. They say they’re concerned by the lack of community involvement up to this point.

A city spokesperson provided responses to KJZZ on behalf of the city and Tucson Water utility.

In a statement, the spokesperson wrote, “in any well-represented stakeholder process, a variety of opinions/options will be furnished to the group for consideration. Typically, a stakeholder group forwards items with consensus support for consideration.”

Tucson City Councilmember Miranda Schubert says she is pleased to see a revision that closes a loophole water-intensive industries have been exploiting, but along with Watershed Management, she wishes the threshold for what qualifies as a large water user was lower.

Many large users could fall through the cracks

The large water user ordinance creates a threshold for corporate water use that triggers the need to conserve. It was created in response to community concerns that data centers could connect to the city’s water supplier, Tucson Water, with little to no public oversight.

The ordinance as written says that any customer using more than 7.48 million gallons of water per month must identify ways to conserve and offset that use.

Catlow Shipek, co-executive director of Watershed Management, says that threshold is too high, potentially limiting opportunities for the city to negotiate and enforce conservation terms with many industries.

“In the last year, there’s been no new large water user at the 10,000 ccf (centum cubic feet) or greater threshold,” Shipeck said. “So, to me, the ordinance isn’t working, right? We need to be able to capture and guide new large water users to use water appropriately and be aligned with our community values and stewardship.”

Schubert agrees, and says it's unlikely that threshold would include many data centers, something the ordinance was originally designed to address.

A document Schubert shared with KJZZ shows the ad hoc committee considered lowering the threshold from 10,000 ccf/month (7.48 million gallons) to 7,500 ccf/month (5.6 million gallons) or 2,500 ccf/month (1.87 million gallons). A city spokesman said these conservation limits are based on what other cities, like Phoenix and Avondale, currently use.

Project Blue, which is continuing construction in unincorporated Pima County, has well permits from the Arizona Department of Water Resources that allow roughly 2.5 million gallons of water use per month.

“I live right next to the U of A, and there’s a data center on campus. But they’re not hyperscale, you know. And so, it’s important to realize that when we’re talking about 10,000 ccf of water a month, that’s like millions of gallons of water. It’s more water in a single month than an average household will use in over a century,” Schubert said.

To assess how many users this threshold could theoretically capture, the committee sought a record of usage among existing customers in Tucson Water’s system.

Although the specific use per customer was concealed due to data privacy rules, Schubert says Tucson Water provided a broad overview, revealing that only 15 customers would meet the large water user threshold. She says these represented parks, golf courses and hospitals.

Schubert did not participate in the ad hoc committee, but says many of its members were in favor of the lowest threshold, which would represent 56 existing customers on Tucson Water’s system.

The city official says the stakeholders settled on the highest limit, which matches the City of Phoenix’s “smaller” threshold; while the 2,500 ccf/month limit, which has Watershed Management and Schubert’s favor, is modeled on the City of Avondale’s limit.

The city spokesperson explained that Avondale’s threshold is so low because the city saw a 250% increase in population between 2000 and 2020, on a more limited water resource portfolio than Tucson’s.

Colorado River cuts still loom 

Shipek believes Tucson Water modeled a lot of the ordinance on Phoenix’s, which is a concern, he says, because Tucson and Phoenix have very different water supply considerations.

Phoenix is larger, with different forms of infrastructure investment that contribute to a more diverse water supply portfolio, he says, while Tucson primarily relies on groundwater and water from the Colorado River. Due to ongoing drought and direction from the federal government, Arizona is expected to lose between 27% and 30% of its annual Colorado River allocation.

Lowering the threshold to gain more oversight of water-intensive industries is, “not saying no to business,” Shipek said. “It’s just making sure that these new businesses that would be consuming more water, we can appropriately guide and help them steward that water.”

A city spokesperson explained that Tucson has a robust water supply — enough to support more than twice the amount of potable demand today, for the next 100 years.

The official says the ordinance is designed to respond to extraordinary growth that is above and beyond what the city has anticipated in its assured water supply designation. The Arizona Department of Water Resources issues these designations to cities or utilities that have proven it has enough water to meet current and future demands for 100 years.

City staff specifically asked that the threshold be large enough that it would not burden many industries viewed as essential to economic development, according to a city spokesman.

According to Shipek, the ad hoc committee also discussed including an amendment to the ordinance that would allow Tucson Water to pause applications from large customers during a drought or signifcant water shortage, something Watershed Management supports.

Shipek says this proposal would have aligned with the city’s drought management plan, which he says includes a protocol where the city says it will pause any annexation agreements during a shortage or drought.

The city’s spokesman said moratoriums like this would only apply under state law if Tucson had no supplies to provide to anyone.

What will large water users be asked to do? 

Once a customer crosses the 7.48 million gallon per month threshold, it will have to agree to use a specific percentage of reclaimed water, set by Tucson Water’s director, and submit water conservation plans to the utility and city council.

Shipek says the ordinance as written lacks any specific conservation requirements, which could leave things too open to the applicant to be a good steward.

“There’s no performance metric other than just to have a conservation plan. So to me, that’s just opening it up for each new large water user is going to be a battle politically for what’s included or not in that conservation plan,” Shipeck said.

He says a clear two-to-one water consumption offset could eliminate that uncertainty. “So, for every one gallon used, you have to provide two gallons of wet water in return, and that can be through supporting savings in our community,” said Shipek.

Shipek says Watershed Management does not view using reclaimed water as a legitimate offset, because reclaimed water is still a critical resource for meeting demand in Tucson.

Schubert says her office supports more specific offset requirements, and is concerned that having the water director determine how much reclaimed water a customer will use project by project, creates regulatory uncertainty.

“Our office’s interest is in creating an ordinance where it doesn’t matter if leadership changes at the council or at Tucson Water, that these guidelines align with our long-term climate and sustainability goals, and ensuring that we have water for future generations,” Schubert said.

Loophole fixed

Since the rejection of Project Blue, Schubert says the lack of regulations on the books to prevent water waste in the city is more evident.

More specifically, throughout the ordinance revision process, she says her office has identified instances of companies splitting their water use among different campuses or water meters to avoid crossing the threshold.

A revision to the ordinance includes a statement that the utility will consider a customer’s water use in aggregate, which should close that loophole, she says.

“So in other words, it doesn't matter how many meters are on the property or the campus that that would be taken into account,” Schubert says.

The rest of the ordinance revisions are included in red in this document (DOCX).