Arizona water-importing proposals dominated by desal plants
Detailed plans for seawater desalination, mostly from Mexican coasts, dominate a list of more than 20 project ideas sent to an Arizona agency for importing water into this increasingly thirsty state. The desalination projects, submitted to the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, are proposed for all over the region’s map. The locations range from Baja California’s Pacific Coast to Southern California’s coastline to near biosphere reserves in northern Sonora to that Mexican state’s western coastline. One would retrofit and reopen the mothballed Yuma Desalting Plant, built more than 30 years ago but never fully used. The much-discussed, Israeli-based IDE Technologies desal project to bring desalted water by pipeline 200 miles north from Puerto Peñasco, Sonora to the Phoenix area was submitted again to the authority, whose board agreed in late 2022 to negotiate over it but then backed off.