Maricopa’s water utility provider is pumping more groundwater but says its “sophisticated model” has allowed it to save even more, too.

Global Water Resources pumped 3.1 billion gallons of groundwater last year, according to its annual report that it presented to the Maricopa City Council last week.

That’s a 300-million-gallon increase from 2022 and 400-million-gallon increase from 2021. A report on groundwater pumping was not provided in 2023.

It’s not an unexpected record to have set in 2024, said GWR Vice President Jon Corwin.

“Obviously, it’s an increase year over year as we continue to see growth in Maricopa because we’re pumping more water to support that,” he said, adding, “We still have 68% designation of our assured water supply available for growth.”

InMaricopa asked Corwin yesterday to explain a few key points from the water utility’s presentation.

Where is Maricopa’s water pumped from?

Our wells are in and around the Maricopa community, so they are pumped from the local aquifer.

How would you describe the impact of introducing recycled water?

One of the things we like to highlight is we offset a lot of groundwater pumping because of the way we were able to use recycled water to send that resource back out to the community. That’s hundreds of millions of gallons of water we save that we otherwise would have had to pump out of the aquifer.

We do recharge some excess recycled water. That’s one of the projects we talked about at the end of the presentation was building a recharge facility. That will allow us to also recharge additional water into the local aquifer as well into the coming years.

I think our model is pretty advanced and we have one of the lowest per capita uses of water of all designated providers within an Active Management Area facility.

Can you explain the amount of acre feet in the local water supply?

We used 9,000 acre feet last year and that comes from the local aquifers.

That number is based on the modeling that allowed us to get the approved designation of assured water supply. There’s up to 23,000 acre feet per year available for us to use, so we’re using significantly less than what we’re approved to use.

Generally speaking, we do measure the water levels. They’re relatively stable within our wells, so we’re not seeing a drawdown in the aquifer.

Can you talk about the groundwater recharging facility that’s in the works?

The recharge facility that we’re partnering with the city of Maricopa on, we obtained grant funding to help offset the cost of that.

When constructed, we anticipate it could recharge approximately 400 to 600 million gallons per year. That’s Class A-plus recycled water that goes into basins and percolates back into the ground. That’d be up to 600 million gallons per year that we can put back into the aquifer.

Is that enough to adequately recharge the groundwater supply?

As part of the designation we’re approved to use up to 23,000 acre feet per year. So that’s based on a 100-year assured water supply and we’re using significantly less than that.

There’s other forms of recharge as well, from rain and some of the local farms and things like that. This isn’t necessarily the only source of recharge back into the aquifer.

Do you have an idea when the recharging facility is supposed to start construction or start operating?

I don’t have a date yet. It’s still kind of in the planning phases, so construction plans are still a little bit out in the future. Hopefully sooner than later.

Are there any models you used for that recharge facility?

Recharge is a common thing throughout Arizona. There’s facilities that are quite large that do a larger scale recharge, so it’s not a novel activity. It is something that is relatively common throughout Arizona.

We get some recharge credits through water we put into the Santa Rosa Wash as well.

Is there anything else you think our readers should know about GWR’s water pumping, use and recharging?

I think our model [for total water management] in general is pretty sophisticated. That’s not just the recycled water we send back out to the community which preserves groundwater, but also the technology customers can use to manage their account and drive down their own consumption and they receive leak alerts which helps preserve water resources.

I think it’s the combination of all those elements that help make Maricopa sustainable and preserve groundwater.

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.