Desalinated ocean water gets one step closer to helping Arizona with drought troubles
Skip to main content
Search Query<br>Show Search
KJZZ is a service of Rio Salado College ,<br>and Maricopa Community Colleges
Copyright © 2026 KJZZ/Rio Salado College/MCCCD
Menu
Show Search
Search Query
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00<br>0:00
Available On Air Stations
On Air
Now Playing
KJZZ
On Air
Now Playing
Jazz PHX
On Air
Now Playing
Classical KBACH
All Streams
Politics
Desalinated ocean water gets one step closer to helping Arizona with drought troubles
KJZZ |<br>By<br>Alex Hager
Published June 4, 2026 at 6:14 AM MST
Threads
Bluesky
Alex Hager
KUNC
Waves crash onto the shore of Carlsbad, California on May 21, 2022. Steps away from this beach sits the largest desalination plant on the continent. A new agreement could pave the way for drinkable water from the facility to benefit faraway cities and farms.
Arizona is one step closer to benefitting from desalinated ocean water as it looks for ways to adapt to dry conditions on the Colorado River.<br>Arizona water officials traveled to the site of the largest water desalination facility in the western hemisphere — in Carlsbad, California — to sign an agreement that could pave the way for transfers involving clean drinking water generated from the Pacific Ocean.<br>The San Diego County Water Authority currently operates the facility. That agency signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding with the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Central Arizona Project and Salt River Project. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the federal Bureau of Reclamation were also part of the agreement.<br>By signing, the agencies committed to explore a way to exchange water from the desalination plant for water from the Colorado River.<br>While the agreement does not actually commit the states to start trading water, officials outlined the kind of deals that could materialize down the road.<br>Basically, instead of piping water from the coast to inland areas, agencies in both places would make a kind of trade. The San Diego County Water Authority would take more water from the desalination plant and leave some of its Colorado River supplies in the river itself, where a different agency — like the Central Arizona Project — could take it instead, for a price.<br>“This is an important step in addressing the goal of augmenting the water supplies of the Colorado River by creating a mechanism to deliver those supplies through an exchange using existing infrastructure,” Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water official, wrote in a press release. “It represents the kind of innovation that Arizona and its Lower Basin partners believe is needed from all the Colorado River states to help stabilize the system in the long term.”
Science
Could ocean water help fix Arizona’s drought troubles? This agreement puts it one step closer
Alex Hager
A desalination plant on the California coast could help Phoenix and Tucson deal with Colorado River cuts.
California-based officials also highlighted the benefits of using existing infrastructure to carry out exchanges. Such deals would be far cheaper and easier than building new desalination plants or long pipelines to physically move water to areas far from the coast.<br>The Carlsbad desalination plant cost $1 billion to build, and tens of millions to operate every year. However, it produces relatively little water — about 10% of the annual supply for the San Diego area.<br>The San Diego County Water Authority has not yet named a sale price for water that could be involved in the exchanges, but it would likely be expensive.<br>The water coming out of the Carlsbad facility today costs about $3,500 per acre-foot. A series of projections from 2023 show the cost of water climbing past $7,000 per acre-foot in the 2040s.<br>By comparison, the Central Arizona Project, which distributes Colorado River Water in the Phoenix and Tucson areas, currently sells its water for $365 per acre-foot.<br>In March, Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, told KJZZ that a transfer program for desalinated ocean water could be a “very tidy solution to a really big problem.”<br>“I think it's a win-win,” Porter said. “San Diego County Water Authority has an overbuilt desal plant, and they would like help paying for that most expensive water and there are water users in southern Nevada and central Arizona that are urgently looking for new water supplies because they're facing uncertainty, except for certainly very deep cuts.”<br>Read KJZZ’s earlier coverage of a potential desalinated water transfer program here.<br>New sources of water are an attractive proposition for Phoenix-area cities. Many of them could face steep cuts under soon-to-be-determined new rules for sharing the Colorado River, and desalinated water could help cover for the supplies they may lose under that...