Water agency gets 6 proposals to increase Arizona's supply — including desalination

An Arizona water agency is assessing a series of proposals by groups who say they can increase the state’s water supply.

Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority put out a request for water augmentation proposals last year and announced this week that it has received six.

“Today’s announcement represents significant progress in WIFA’s mission to advance water augmentation projects that help secure Arizona’s water future,” Long Term Water Augmentation Fund Committee Chairman Ted Cooke said in a statement. “The receipt of these offers proves that there is capacity and capability to develop new, renewable water supplies for Arizona and that WIFA’s process for ensuring that we approach any investment in generational water infrastructure with a sound, methodical approach is working.”

Arizona lawmakers expanded WIFA’s funding in 2022 under the leadership of former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for the purpose of attracting a company to accomplish a significant augmentation project.

At the time, Ducey spoke of the possibility of building a desalination plant in partnership with Mexico.

That year, Ducey and legislators committed to allocating $1 billion to WIFA over the course of the next three years to fund an augmentation project. But Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and the new state Legislature that came into office in 2023 clawed back the vast majority of that funding.

WIFA objected, arguing that without enough money, the agency wouldn’t be able to attract a company to start an augmentation project.

Multiple entities that have now submitted proposals to WIFA are involved in desalination and want to create a renewable Arizona water supply from ocean water.

Of the six proposals WIFA is considering, four are from EPCOR — the state’s largest private water utility.

The other two proposals are both for desalination and came from Acciona-Fengate Water Augmentation Alliance and ZARETAW.

Hobbs said in May that desalination is still on the table and accused Ducey of not approaching the topic diplomatically with Mexico.

She added that desalination negotiations must be approached diplomatically with Mexico, and she accused her predecessor of not doing that when he left office.

In 2022, it appeared that Ducey’s administration had already begun talks with an Israeli company called IDE about building a desalination plant on the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, and some stakeholders had already signed non-disclosure agreements about the talks.

That led to concerns by lawmakers and other groups about transparency and accusations of backroom deals.

The government of the Mexican state Sonora — where the desalination plant would presumably be built — criticized IDE at the time and said that it wouldn’t work with the company because the company was misrepresenting the idea that they’d agreed to something.

In 2022, IDE’s project manager lobbying for the company to get the deal with WIFA was a man named Erez Hoter-Ishay.

He’s now the president of ZARETAW.

IDE Technologies is not listed as an applicant by WIFA, but in a joint cover letter to WIFA, ZARETAW and IDE Technologies describe themselves as a “project team."

The non-desalination-related proposals WIFA is considering are all from EPCOR. They fall under the categories of surface water, wastewater reclamation and other water source(s).

The urgency of Arizona pursuing a water augmentation project has increased over the years as drought conditions and groundwater pumping have steadily decreased the state’s existing water supply.

WIFA spokesman Ben Alteneder said the WIFA board hopes to select one or more of the proposals by Dec. 1.