By Brian Simons | Downtown Devil
Officials with the City of Phoenix Water Services Department met Wednesday morning with a sustainability subcommittee to discuss the grave situation facing the Colorado River and the city’s lack of infrastructure to tap into water-storing aquifers.
“Phoenix has been planning for shortage for thirty years,” Kathryn Sorensen, the city’s Water Services director, said while addressing the Water, Wastewater, Infrastructure and Sustainability subcommittee. The city “has enough water to withstand even worst-case situations on the Colorado River.”
For decades, Phoenix has been diverting some of the water it receives from the Colorado River and banking it in reservoirs for future use. This, coupled with the vast aquifer under the city, ensures there will be enough water to survive shortages. However, when the city decided forty years ago to rely on a renewable surface water supply system and save groundwater, many wells were abandoned. Phoenix’s ability to physically access banked groundwater grew extremely limited.
