The town of Queen Creek is among the only communities in the Phoenix metro region that is not considered a designated water provider. That means that its residents have to pay a fee to get water delivered and to replenish groundwater they use.
This month, the Queen Creek Town Council authorized officials to negotiate a potential $240 million deal to pump groundwater from Harquahala Valley, about 70 miles west of Phoenix. That additional groundwater would help Queen Creek qualify as designated water providers
“By becoming designated, we will no longer be pumping groundwater that needs to be replenished,” said Queen Creek Water Resource Director Paul Gardner.
The deal would be for up to 1.2 million acre feet of water over the next 100 years, though the final agreement could come out to half that amount.
The town already has enough groundwater to last for 100 years and has certification of assured water supply. But town officials are looking to get designation so that they aren’t reliant on the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District to handle recharge.
“So if you were to look around in the valley, the two largest water providers that aren't designated are in the two fastest growing areas of Buckeye and Queen Creek,” Gardner says.
Queen Creek relies heavily on its aquifers to provide customers with water. It needs additional water supplies to either offset the groundwater it uses or to replenish the aquifer to become a designated water provider.
“For every gallon of water you pump out, that's considered groundwater. You have to put back into, have to bring another source of water and put it back into the aquifer,” Gardner said.
Gardner says bringing in water from Harquahala Valley would let them do just that. And he says the deal would do away with a recharge fee Queen Creek water users pay to the CAGRD.
By becoming a designated water provider, Queen Creek’s water customers wouldn’t have to pay extra fees to replenish the water.
“One, it allows us to control our destiny. Two, it allows us to help control cost. And three, it allows us to be able to do better long-term planning because we have the water resources available to get us to what we call build out without relying upon a third party like CAGRD.” Gardner said.
The town would purchase the water in February, but will have until mid-January for what it called its investigation period.
“So our biggest thing is just to make sure what the costs are going to be, designing part of the construction facilities. The other part that we're looking at is the financing side. So it gives us till January to figure out all the things on financing this water, how we're going to pay for it,” Gardner said.
A separate agreement is needed to use Central Arizona Project canals to deliver the water.
“We'll pay them an operation and maintenance fee for moving that water from Harkuahala out to Queen Creek. So that's going to be a separate charge that will be a separate deal that we'll absorb as part of the rates,” Gardner said. But Gardner said how that will be “absorbed” isn’t clear yet, “some of the things that we'll have to do long term is reviewing the rate structure of how this is all paid for.”
