As Colorado River Talks Drag On, Scottsdale Builds Its Own Backup Plan

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Scottsdale is planning for a future with less Colorado River water, and city officials say they are already preparing for it.

While negotiations over the river’s future continue in Washington and across seven states, Scottsdale Water says it is relying on long-term planning, a diversified water portfolio and continued infrastructure investment to keep water service reliable no matter what comes next.

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Last year, the city formed a cross-disciplinary team called the CAP Supply Shortage Sub-group to study what could happen under different shortage scenarios and how Scottsdale would respond.

The group includes experts in water engineering, water quality, water production, process control, optimization, policy and wastewater reclamation.

The team meets regularly to model supply reduction scenarios and test the city’s infrastructure and operations against them. Its goal is to understand how water supplies and delivery systems could be rebalanced to meet customer demand, even under uncertain conditions.

“One of our primary shared responsibilities within Scottsdale Water is to plan for uncertainty long before it becomes reality,” said Thyra Ryden-Diaz, interim senior director of Water Resources. “Our infrastructure needs to satisfy a wide range of conditions and scenarios to provide the necessary water quantity, quality and reliability needed for Scottsdale to thrive.”

Five strategies

The city says decades of planning have gone into building flexibility and redundancy into its water system, and its current strategy rests on five pillars: managing demand, advanced water purification, conveying groundwater from the Harquahala Irrigation Non-Expansion Area, a proposed expansion of Bartlett Dam and monitoring emerging water technologies.

Together, those efforts are meant to reduce Scottsdale’s dependence on any single water source. Some pieces, including advanced purification and the Bartlett Dam expansion, are still in earlier planning stages.

Others are already underway. The city says it is bringing new wells online now to expand access to aquifer resources and strengthen long-term reliability.

City staff are expected to bring additional recommendations to the City Council as ongoing studies are completed.