There are a lot of projects underway in Arizona to try to mitigate our water future in the short term. But, Chuck Podolak, director of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, or WIFA, is making efforts to address our state’s long-term water supply.
The plan? Importing billions of gallons of water from out of state.
WIFA announced in recent weeks it’s taking the first step in this ambitious plan by putting out the call for prospective bidders, companies that could import more than 100 billion gallons of water here.
Full conversation
CHUCK PODOLAK: Our goal that we develop by talking to actual customers, users, people who might want this water, is somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 acre feet a year.
LAUREN GILGER: Sounds like a lot.
PODOLAK: It is a lot. So I mean, by reference, the entire state uses about 7.5 million acre feet a year.
GILGER: OK. So how does this work when we're talking about bringing water in? I picture maybe our canal system. Is it pipelines? What's the infrastructure?
PODOLAK: Well, we don't know yet, and that's the exciting part of the process we just kicked off. For a long time. So this isn't a new idea. This is something that we've talked about in the Southwest since probably the late ‘60s. It's something we've talked about increasingly serious in Arizona, for probably about the last 10 years. Looked at options, looked at white papers, studies, but no one said, OK, this we think can work. This is the detailed plan of how we're gonna make it work.
And so what, what we did about over the last year with our board is to say, what is the process to go forward? How do you want to pick one of these options on the table? What we came up with was this sort of multi-stage thing. They said, there's a lot of opinions, a lot of people have a gut feel, this will never work. This is the only solution.
And so we said, to go beyond that gut, let's do this multi-step thing where we go out and solicit teams. So we want to have large, well-formed teams of experienced people who have an idea, have a concept of how to bring water in. That could be ideas people have thrown around or go down to the Gulf of California and Mexico and build the desal plant. People have talked about desalinating water on the Pacific coast, whether that's in Mexico or California. People have talked about ambitious ideas like looking at the Missouri River.
And so to, rather than to rule those out, we said, OK, if you're experienced, you're someone who has experience building or, or creating these kind of large projects, come in with your concept, and we want to pick multiple teams. We want to have multiple ideas going at once, working for us in this multi-phase thing, so we can spend a while analyzing everything.
And so then at the end of this, we have multiple teams competing that have these multiple ideas all fleshed out, and that allows us to make a responsible choice about what's the most viable, what's the most economic, what's the most environmentally compliant and pick among those.
And so we're still in that first stage of like, OK, we're willing to put our money where our mouth is, we're willing to actually put money at analyzing multiple competing things. And so what we've put out is a call to industry, we've called it our solicitation. And that allows us to invite those proposers that come in and compete in a, in a competitive solicitation.
GILGER: OK, so now we'll see who comes to the table, essentially. OK, this could end up costing Arizonans more money as they try to pay for this water in the future than it would, like, you know, your mix of tap water we get right now.
PODOLAK: Absolutely. I think we've been very clear that some of the cheapest water we enjoy in Arizona comes down by gravity down the salt and the Verde Rivers to central Phoenix. The next most expensive water is probably the water that we bring in all the way from Lake Havasu via the Central Arizona Project.
We're talking about importing water even further away. And so just like the water from the Colorado River is more expensive than the water from the Salt and Verde. The water we're talking about would be more expensive than that Colorado River water, and that's just a reality of finding new renewable supply is the cheap renewable stuff is all spoken for. And so we're going further and further away, which will cost more money.
GILGER: Yeah, yeah. OK, so let's back up and talk a little bit about the shortage that we're trying to stave off here, which is pretty well estimated. We're going to need a whole lot more water in the future. The projected growth that we're going to need is pretty massive. What kind of dent would a project like this have in meeting that demand?
PODOLAK: So we think it would meet most of it. There's been various estimates. The federal government, the state of Arizona have made estimates about how much water might the state need. Rather than saying we've got it, we're going to go solve that. What we did is we went around to, about a year ago, all the potential water users, all the major water users in central Arizona and said, we're looking at doing an imported water project that will be expensive. You know your water supplies best. Are you interested in working with us on bringing new supplies in?
And when we added up what users told us, that's how we got to that 100,000 to 500,000 acre foot number. And so that's really a, a user-driven number.
GILGER: OK. So this of course comes after your funding for WEFA was cut pretty drastically last year at the state Capitol. Do you wish you could do more, I guess? Like you're, you're kind of doing what you can with what you have, but you would have had almost twice this.
PODOLAK: So that's been interesting, the last six months in the, in the wake of those budget cuts. On the one hand, we have the money we need to proceed responsibly right now. On the other hand, we would like to send a strong signal to the world, to industry, to potential partners that were committed to this, and that was really the response.
I think we tried to have a relatively nuanced response to those budget cuts. We did not say WIFFA cannot function. We did not say WIFA is going away. What we said is we're concerned about the signal this sends. We need to attract partners in projects like this. And when we have cuts without any other statements about WIFA, it really puts into question whether the state's in it for the long term.
And what we saw, what was very heartening to me was, was later was as we went throughout the summer, we saw those statements of support. We saw Gov. [Katie] Hobbs, not just in private but in public, talk about the importance of augmentation, talk about moving forward on, on responsible water importation. We saw Senate President [Warren] Petersen talk about the importance of what it was doing, his view that these were temporary cuts.
And so that's really what we were looking to show the world, is that, yes, we have the money today to do what we need today, and yes, we have increasingly vocal public support by our elected leadership that the state of Arizona is committed to our water future and the state of Arizona is a good partner for these long-term projects.
GILGER: So you don't anticipate at this point those funding cuts affecting who might bid on a project like this?
PODOLAK: Well, I hope not. I mean, it's certainly, we're, we're worried about what we can do to show that we're a good partner. What we've done is when we submitted to the governor our budget request, what we've said very publicly is We are not asking for additional money next year. Despite the cuts, we are not going back to the Legislature and saying please give us more money next year.
What we're saying is, we're good for now. If you continue to cut, that's gonna be a problem, but we are not asking you to make those hard decisions about other cuts in order to plus up with, for those augmentation programs next year.
GILGER: Not next year, but in the future?
PODOLAK: In the future, I think so. And so as we go out, the solicitation, as we bring new teams in and as we, as we do a thorough analysis of those, those different projects, I think it will become clear what is needed from the state. Maybe that's not next year, maybe it's not two years from now, but maybe we're three, four years down the road where we've identified this is the project and this is what's needed from the state. And at that point, I think we will end up back in the Legislature making the case for state commitment to those specific funding needs.
GILGER: OK, so a project like this as it moves forward, what's the timeline? Should we expect bringing water into the state anytime soon?
PODOLAK: No. When this program was created, the Legislature conveniently named it the Long Term Water Augmentation Project. I think that the naming is important, right? Some, sometimes some government names are super obtuse, but I think that very clearly in the name, right, this talks about the long term.
There are things that can be done today. There are short-term leases with Indian tribes. There's work going on in the Salt River Project system at Roosevelt Dam and at Bartlett Dam. There's good work going on on advanced water purification going on right now. And so those are all sort of near-term things. I think people have called some of those bridge supplies.
And what we're doing is we're, we're building the thing on the other side of that bridge.
GILGER: Interesting.
PODOLAK: We're not trying to meet next year's need. We're trying to meet next decade's need.
