Scottsdale Spends $8.25 Million To Prepare For Colorado River Uncertainty

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — As negotiations over the Colorado River's future continue to drag on in Washington, Scottsdale is once again betting on its own backup plan.

The City Council voted June 23 to purchase 15,000 acre-feet of Long-Term Storage Credits for $8.25 million, growing the city's total stored water reserves to nearly 293,000 acre-feet.

It's the latest move in a strategy city officials say is meant to keep water service reliable no matter what happens with the river.

The newly purchased credits represent water stored underground in Arizona's Harquahala Valley, west of Phoenix, generated through the storage of Central Arizona Project water. The credits can be recovered for future use or held indefinitely as part of the city's drought planning.

This purchase comes just a week after Scottsdale Water detailed its broader strategy for managing Colorado River uncertainty. Last year, the city formed a team called the CAP Supply Shortage Sub-group, made up of experts in water engineering, water quality, production, policy and wastewater reclamation, to model different shortage scenarios and stress-test the city's infrastructure against them.

That broader plan rests on five strategies: 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

. This week's credit purchase falls squarely within that Harquahala strategy, expanding the city's reach into water assets outside the traditional Phoenix metro supply.

"Scottsdale has never taken a wait-and-see approach to water," said City Manager Greg Caton. "For decades, we've planned ahead, diversified our resources and invested in strategies that protect our community from future uncertainty. This purchase not only adds to our long-term reserves, but it also expands the diversity of our water portfolio by securing additional assets in a different part of the state."

Long-Term Storage Credits work like a savings account for water. When water isn't needed immediately, it can be stored underground through authorized recharge programs and tracked by the Arizona Department of Water Resources as credits that can later be recovered, transferred or sold.

Scottsdale now holds about 293,000 acre-feet in storage credits, making it one of the largest holders of stored water reserves in the region

. Because the new credits sit in a non-expansion irrigation area, Arizona law allows the underlying groundwater to be transported into an Active Management Area, giving the city another layer of flexibility outside its core metro supply.

"Long-Term Storage Credits provide flexibility, resilience and additional protection against future supply challenges," said Thyra Ryden-Diaz, interim senior director of Water Resources. "One of our primary shared responsibilities within Scottsdale Water is to plan for uncertainty long before it becomes reality. 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."

Scottsdale's water portfolio includes supplies from the Central Arizona Project, Salt River Project, groundwater wells and water reuse programs. Funding for this week's purchase will come from the Water Fund Capital Improvement Program contingency.

City staff are expected to bring additional water planning recommendations to the council as ongoing studies are completed.