Facts Over Fiction on Scottsdale’s Water

Councilwoman Solange Whitehead’s recent column claims city water professionals and her colleagues misled residents at our latest work-study session. The record says otherwise.

For months, Whitehead and her political ally Raoul Zubia have warned that Scottsdale’s water security is in crisis and that Advanced Water Purification (AWP) is the only fix. The city’s own experts presented a different picture.

Scottsdale holds legal rights to roughly 141,000 acre-feet per year. Last year we used about 90,800. That leaves a substantial surplus. Experts noted that even a potential 17 percent cut to our CAP allocation would not drop us below current use.

Our supply is diversified—CAP, SRP, reclaimed water, and groundwater. Experts also highlighted AWP’s limits: very high cost per acre-foot and relatively small volume. It is not the all-purpose solution Whitehead and Zubia have promoted.

Those are the facts presented by city staff.

Whitehead dismissed the briefing, restated that our supply is insecure, and continued pushing AWP as the answer. She remains silent on the demand side. Her earlier high-density apartment rezonings—more than 6,000 units—use several times more water than single-family homes on the same land. The prior majority accelerated those projects; the current majority has slowed them.

Residents heard the experts. Scottsdale has a secure, diversified portfolio and practical options already in motion: stronger conservation, banking, system connections, and targeted acquisitions. Living in a desert requires vigilance—more conservation and smart investments. It does not require rushing to spend hundreds of millions on an experimental program that would supply only a small fraction of our needs while costs and rules are still unsettled.

City experts laid out the facts. We are listening to them and will continue asking Whitehead to work from those facts rather than political narratives. Not every issue needs to become a blame game.