A city utility
Scottsdale Water is a department of the city, run under the city manager and funded by water and sewer rates the council sets. It buys raw water, treats it, delivers it to taps, collects wastewater, cleans it and reuses it. Like every Valley city, it works inside a web of outside players: the Central Arizona Project, which brings Colorado River water across the desert; the Salt River Project, which delivers water from the Salt and Verde rivers; and the state, whose water law limits groundwater pumping.
Where the water comes from
About 90% of Scottsdale’s drinking water is surface water:
- Colorado River water through the CAP canal, roughly two-thirds of the supply. It is treated at the city’s CAP plant on the Water Campus, which can handle 70 million gallons a day.
- Salt and Verde river water from SRP, treated at the Chaparral plant, hidden inside Chaparral Park beside the Arizona Canal.
- Groundwater, less than 10%, kept mostly as a backup.
On top of that, the city recycles its wastewater. Some goes to golf courses; some is purified further and pumped back into the aquifer as savings for a dry year. That layering is the point: when the Colorado River runs short, the city can lean harder on SRP water, stored groundwater and recycled supplies rather than cutting off its own customers.
Why it matters
Before the mid-1980s Scottsdale ran almost entirely on groundwater, which Arizona’s 1980 Groundwater Management Act made a limited resource. Colorado River water arrived in 1987, and the city has since built a system designed around the assumption that any one source could fail. That assumption was tested in the 2020s, when the Colorado River fell into shortage and the city’s drought plan produced its most controversial decision.
Recycled water on the fairways
North Scottsdale’s golf boom in the 1980s and 1990s ran into a problem: courses were pumping groundwater the state now wanted conserved. The answer, conceived by the city and Desert Mountain, was the Reclaimed Water Distribution System, which went into service on March 24, 1993. It is a public-private partnership: participating clubs paid for the pipelines, pump stations and treatment, now more than $55 million, so ratepayers didn’t. Today it can deliver 20 million gallons a day of non-potable water to 23 north Scottsdale courses, sparing an estimated billion gallons of groundwater a year. Next time you’re on a desert course, that’s probably what the sprinklers are running.
The Water Campus
The Water Campus, a 145-acre site in north Scottsdale that opened in 1998–99 at a cost of $116 million, puts drinking-water treatment, wastewater reclamation and advanced purification side by side. Its Advanced Water Treatment plant takes already-treated wastewater through ozone, membrane ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light, producing up to 20 million gallons a day. In 2019 the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality made it the state’s first permanent facility permitted to treat recycled water for potable use. Much of that water goes underground through recharge wells, and the city has maintained safe yield, putting back at least as much groundwater as it pumps, since 2006.
From water company to water campus
Early Scottsdale got its water from wells and private companies. On March 15, 1971, the city bought the Indian Bend Water Company for $2.7 million and became its own utility. The 1980 Groundwater Management Act then forced new development in the Phoenix area to prove a 100-year water supply, and by 1982 Scottsdale had a Water Conservation Office. The city of Mayor Herb Drinkwater made the big bet: a CAP treatment plant that began running in April 1987, pumping 7 million gallons a day at first. It later grew to today’s 70 million gallons a day. In 1988 Scottsdale also joined the water rights settlement with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community that Congress ratified that year.
The system has had its scares. Industrial solvents contaminated groundwater under north Indian Bend Wash, and a treatment plant built to remove them came online in 1995. And the lakes of the Greenbelt remain a reminder of how generously this city once used water.
The drought plan and Rio Verde
Scottsdale updated its Drought Management Plan in April 2021, with stages that tighten as supplies shrink. It declared Stage 1 in 2022, in step with the first federal shortage declaration on the Colorado River. One Stage 1 provision ended hauled-water sales to anyone who couldn’t show the water was going to a Scottsdale resident or business.
That provision landed on the Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated community northeast of the city whose hundreds of homes had been built on water trucked from a Scottsdale standpipe. On January 1, 2023, the standpipe closed to them. The city argued it could not guarantee water to people outside its service area when its own supply was at risk; critics called the cutoff harsh, and the story went worldwide. The legislature responded with SB 1432, signed on June 19, 2023, creating a standpipe district. Scottsdale then treated and delivered water supplied by a third party, EPCOR, starting that October, until EPCOR opened a permanent filling station on January 1, 2026.
What comes next
For 2026 the Colorado River is in a Tier 1 shortage, and the city says its municipal supply is not reduced. The rules governing the river expire at the end of 2026, and the replacement guidelines that start in 2027 could cut Arizona’s share further. Scottsdale’s 40-year hedge of recycling, recharge and diverse supplies is about to face its hardest test.