Water agency to vote on Arizona's water future, desalination proposals

Arizona water officials will decide on the course of the state’s future with a vote Wednesday on whether or not to pursue desalination.

The state’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority has a handful of project proposals in consideration to augment the state’s water supply. Of the five proposals before the WIFA board, two are desalination projects.

Last week, the Long-Term Water Augmentation Committee Meeting met in private “executive” sessions to consider those proposals and made confidential recommendations to the full WIFA board about which projects to pursue.

WIFA member Ted Cooke said he’s “jazzed” about the upcoming vote.

“I’m very, very hopeful that the board will decide to move forward on at least some of the projects that were recommended, and I think this is about as far along - if this happens - this is as far along as Arizona has been,” Cooke said.

If the board agrees to pursue one or more of the proposals, it could permanently increase Arizona’s water supply.

WIFA was established as its own agency in 2022 and tasked with looking into augmentation ideas.

Under former Gov. Doug Ducey, the agency was promised $1 billion over the course of three years to achieve those new goals, but most of that funding was clawed back by Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration over the past three years.

WIFA leaders urged Hobbs and lawmakers to reconsider, arguing that they wouldn’t be able to secure a serious augmentation project without the funding.

In 2022, Ducey showed interest in building a desalination plant on the Sea of Cortez in Mexico and was in conversation with an Israeli company called IDE.

Ducey’s negotiations with IDE and the fact that some stakeholders had already been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements about the project caused concern among lawmakers about transparency and backroom deals.

Also, the government of Sonora, Mexico - where Ducey wanted to build the plant - criticized IDE and put out a statement voting not to work with the company because they misrepresented the idea that Mexico had agreed to a deal with them.

Hobbs has said desalination is still on the table, but accused Ducey of not working diplomatically with Mexico as he should have.

Two of the proposals WIFA received are for desalination. One comes from the Acciona-Fengate Water Alliance and the other is from ZARETAW.

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."

If one or more of the projects is approved by the board, it will move into a predevelopment phase with WIFAS collecting more information before moving to the final stages.