BUCKEYE, AZ — Along the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Canal, just beyond the city of Buckeye, is a place being considered for a project that could double the amount of water in the canal.
"It's a game changer for the state if it works," said Chuck Podolak with the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona.
On the Gulf of Mexico, an Israeli company wants to build the biggest desalination plant in the world. It would remove salt from seawater and pump water up over Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and let gravity get it to the CAP canal.
Sandy Bahr with the Sierra Club calls it, "ludicrous". "The reason that it's a national monument is because it's a special place," she said.
Even advocates admit while it would create a reliable source of water and has worked everywhere, there are challenges.
It takes a lot of energy, produces potentially toxic brine and the end product is very expensive.
The biggest issue may be the border, according to Kathryn Sorensen of the Kyl Center for Water Policy.
"There may be some real problems relying on a major water supply that's located in a different country," she said.
This is why western states are also looking east to the Mississippi River and a pipeline that could divert unwanted floodwater to the Colorado River.
Rhett Larson of the Kyl Center for Water Policy says he rolled his eyes and shook his head when people brought it up initially.
"We're at a point now where things are so dire that you can't be so quick to discount ideas," he stated.
In fact, the federal government was supposed to have done something like that years ago, according to Tom Buschatzke with the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
"Moving water from some other place, Columbia, Mississippi, Missouri, was embedded in the 1968 federal legislation that authorized the Central Arizona Project," he said.
With the uncertain future of the Colorado River water supply, communities will need more than those options mentioned that are still years away.
