DISTRICT PROFILE
Sustainability in the Middle of the Desert: Scottsdale Water Scottsdale Water’s treatment plant for Central Arizona Project water.
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cottsdale Water has the formidable task of providing the quarter-million residents of the desert city of Scottsdale, Arizona, with water every day. Moreover, the utility must comply with the State of Arizona’s high standards of environmental sustainability and water-use efficiency. Scottsdale Water responded to these challenges with a first-ofits-kind Water Campus that returns more water to the region’s aquifer than it takes out. For its accomplishments, Scottsdale Water received the Sustainable Water Utilities Management Award from the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies in 2018. Brian K. Biesemeyer, PE, is the executive director of Scottsdale Water. In this interview, he speaks with Municipal Water Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill about his utility’s unique Water Campus, its indirect potable reuse program, and its education initiatives in the Scottsdale community. Joshua Dill: Please tell our readers about Scottsdale Water and the area it serves.
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Joshua Dill: Where does the water for your system come from? Brian Biesemeyer: The largest portion of our total water supply—around 60 percent—comes from the Central Arizona Project, which is Colorado River water. We get another 13 percent from the Salt and Verde Rivers; that water is delivered to us by the Salt River Project. That Salt and Verde River water comes from watersheds in northern and eastern Arizona; they are not like the Colorado River, which runs through several states. We also supplement our water supply during highdemand periods—at the height of our Arizona summers— with groundwater, but we are unique in that while we do pump groundwater, we actually put more water back into the ground through our recharge activities than we pump out. Scottsdale was the first city in Arizona to achieve safe yield, pumping out less groundwater than we put back in the aquifer. We have achieved safe yield every year since 2006. We are pretty proud of that, as it speaks to the sustainability of the city. MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTTSDALE WATER.
Brian Biesemeyer: Scottsdale Water is a municipal water supplier for the City of Scottsdale. We serve a fairly large geographic area—about 185 square miles—with a population of about 240,000 folks. Scottsdale is a long, narrow city, about 32 miles long and only about 8 miles wide, with a fair bit of elevation change, rising 3,700 feet from south to north. We also have some beautiful desert geography and large preserve areas in between, so our service area creates some unique challenges.
We have a little over 2,000 miles of water main with 18 pressure zones, and about 1,400 miles of sewer main with five pumpback stations. We deliver, on average, about 67 million gallons per day of potable water and up to 20 million gallons per day of reclaimed and advanced treated water for irrigation, primarily to our golf courses. Our annual operating budget is around $123 million.
