PEORIA, AZ — Peoria implemented stage 1 of its drought management plan in June, which means the city is cutting 5% of its use and is asking residents to voluntarily do the same.
It's another way the shortage on the Colorado River is shifting how cities handle their water.
"Water is a long game," said Cape Powers, Peoria Water Services Director. "And I'm glad it is because I'm glad people are looking out, you know, 50, 100 years."
Powers' job includes reconciling the amount of water the city needs with the amount that it has.
Each day, 14 million gallons of it can be treated at the city's Greenway Treatment Plant, which cleans water from the Salt and Verde Rivers via the Salt River Project.
Powers says it's one of several sources that supply water for the city.
In 2021, SRP accounted for 28.5% of the city's water usage, Central Arizona Project water from the Colorado River accounted for 33.9%, 32.8% came from recovered well water, 3.2% was recycled water and 1.5% came from groundwater.
"We intentionally want multiple sources of water and multiple ways to supply our customers with water so that we should at any time have problems with one of the sources of water," Powers told ABC15.
The Colorado River is having those problems.
Because of the historic drought, cuts are being made to the states that use it.
In Peoria, that could mean losing up to 2% of its CAP allotment in 2023 as required by the Drought Contingency Plan.
"It's one to 2% of the water that we store in the ground, it's not what we actively deliver to our customers," Powers said.
But an even bigger cut could be on the way.
The seven Colorado Basin States and Mexico are still negotiating how to leave an additional two-to-four million acre-feet in the river next year, in order to stabilize the system. One acre-foot could fill a football field a foot high.
It's a situation Powers says he is "very concerned about," but that even a large shortage has been planned for.
"If the Central Arizona Project canal quits flowing water to Peoria, we have enough backups in place. Nobody's in imminent threat of losing their water supply. Nobody's tap is going to go dry," he said.
One of those backups is more than 190,000-acre feet of water the city has stored in the ground for times of scarcity.
