Water started flowing through a new pipe system this week, making it easier for cities to access underground storage pools. The $25 million pipeline, built by the Salt River Project, carries a relatively small amount of water, but represents a step towards the kind of interconnected water systems that will be crucial for the Valley to survive a drier future.
The Gilbert Road Pipeline runs 3.5 miles, crossing the Salt River bed and a portion of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community near Mesa. It carries water from the Granite Reef Underground Storage Project, or GRUSP, to the Arizona Canal. The canal is a major piece of the Valley’s water infrastructure that has carried water to city treatment plants for decades.
Today, the same canal will make it easier for those cities to access water they stored underground as a backup plan for dry times. Now, those dry times are here.
Colorado River cutbacks are imminent, and cities around the Valley will lean harder on other supplies — such as the Salt and Verde rivers and underground aquifers — to soften the blow of cuts and keep taps flowing.
Since its completion in 1994, the Granite Reef storage project has recharged an underground aquifer with over 1 million acre-feet of water. By comparison, Roosevelt Lake, a giant reservoir in the foothills east of Phoenix, can hold about 1.6 million acre-feet at full capacity. The underground stores are a mix of excess water from a few sources — the Central Arizona Project, the Salt River Project, and treated wastewater from the city of Mesa. The facility is owned by SRP, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe.
With the completion of the new pipeline, those cities will be able to directly access that water once it is removed by wells over the aquifer.
“It's a transmission highway for water,” said Sharon Morris, SRP’s director of water construction. “So we can move heavy water that takes a lot of time quickly. That may not have been easy for our city partners to get to otherwise.”
Cuts to the Colorado River are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. The exact size and distribution of cutbacks are not yet known, but they are expected to hit cities in the Phoenix metro harder than anywhere else across the seven states that use the river’s water.
Local leaders have spent years preparing for those cuts, and they have long looked to underground storage as part of those plans. Recently, Valley cities argued with the Arizona Water Banking Authority about how much of that water they would be given under Colorado River shortages. After some public back-and-forth, the Water Bank told cities they would be given access to as much water as they lose from the Colorado River.
The new Gilbert Road pipeline was built in partnership with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Martin Harvier, the community’s president, spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the pipeline and said his tribe’s ancestors were known for developing canal systems through the Valley.
“Water is life,” Harvier said. “Helping in putting this system in, I know we're providing life for those that come after us.”
