A small amount of the city’s water supply comes from groundwater and recycled wastewater. Phoenix relies on imported Colorado River water and also uses water from the in-state Salt and Verde rivers. Over the past two years, Arizona’s supply from the 1,450-mile powerhouse of the West has been cut twice.

Much of the focus has stayed on the dwindling Colorado River, a main water source for Arizona and six other Western states. Years of drought in the West worsened by climate change have ratcheted up pressure among Western states to use less water. And Hobbs added that there are 80,000 unbuilt homes that will be able to move forward because they already have assured water supply certificates within the Phoenix Active Management Area, a designation used for regulating groundwater. Officials said new water limits would not affect existing homeowners who already have assured water supplies. “It closes off that path,” said Kathryn Sorenson, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.īecause the rule largely affects cities and towns outside Phoenix and larger cities in the metro area, Sorenson said developers would likely “weigh whether they want to continue to buy relatively cheap land … and incur the cost of developing a whole new water supply versus purchase land that is probably more expensive without the boundaries of a designated city.” Local customers can expect traffic delays. to 4:30 p.m., a news release from SMWD said. The work will be done Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. Under the new restrictions, that won’t be possible. Santa Margarita Water District will replace 500 feet of sewer pipeline on Los Rios Street from June 5-18 as part of sewer upgrades planned in San Juan Capistrano. Hobbs and other state officials recently vowed to take more steps to protect the state’s groundwater supplies. Groundwater has long been pumped by farmers and rural residents in Arizona with little oversight. But in rural areas, there are few limitations on its use. Under a 1980 state law aimed at protecting the state’s aquifers, Phoenix, Tucson and other Arizona cities have restrictions on how much groundwater they can pump. Katie Hobbs said “nobody who has water is going to lose their water.” households per year.ĭespite the move, the Gov. An acre-foot of water is roughly enough for two to three U.S. Homebuilding around Phoenix just got trickier.Īrizona will not approve new housing construction on the fast-growing edges of the nation’s fifth-largest city where groundwater is now in short supply thanks to years of overuse and a multi-decade drought.Ī state projection shows that over the next 100 years, demand in metro Phoenix for almost 4.9 million acre-feet of groundwater would be unmet without further action.

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