The City of Tucson just bought 21,000 acre-feet of groundwater storage credits from the Bureau of Reclamation.
In June, the City placed a bid with the federal agency which was selling 30,000 acre-feet of stored treated wastewater from an aquifer recharge project along the Santa Cruz River.
The water credits are wet water amounts based on acre-feet within the Tucson aquifer that can be available for future use or projects within a cooperative agreement that allows government entities to control a share of effluent for future recovery through the Lower Santa Cruz Managed Recharge Project, which is now known as the Tres Ríos Reclamation Facility.
“The local utilities have designations of assured water supply, so anytime we have additional renewable resources like effluent or CAP water that may go into aquifer stores, that all helps support our overall water portfolios with the state of Arizona," said John Kmiec, director of Tucson Water.
Scott Schladweiler, deputy director of the water company said the City is in the process of transferring the water into the City’s water portfolio, during last week’s virtual Project Blue town hall meeting.
“This is something that could be transferred and utilized for economic development. There are a number of opportunities for supply augmentation,” he said.
Kmiec noted that every drop of water counts and could be used more than once by Tucson customers.
“In support of either those uses that have been traditionally used like school playgrounds and city parks and county parks but also providing potentially economic opportunities for industries that might have a water use demand that don’t want to necessarily be on the drinking water system,” Kmiec said.
Under the 1982 Southern Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act, the Bureau of Reclamation has entitlement to the first 28,200 acre-feet of metropolitan generated wastewater in the Tucson area, in trust for the Tohono O’odham Nation.
“Every so often as they build credits in the aquifer, they can sell those water credits or transfer those water credits to other users in exchange for payment,” Kmiec said.
