A ritzy Arizona enclave is facing water cuts, and the most divisive idea to offset them begins with millions of gallons of sewage. Call it affluent effluent.
The plan — which involves rigorously treating and purifying wastewater, then routing it straight to residential taps — has long been seen as critical for the future of Scottsdale, a city heavily reliant on the dwindling flow of the Colorado River.
But in recent months, Scottsdale’s wastewater recycling program has been sucked into a bitter political dispute, and its fate could hinge on the outcome of the city’s elections on Tuesday.
The Scottsdale City Council, where two seats are up for grabs, is nominally nonpartisan, but this year’s race may change the balance of power on water issues. Two candidates, both running on a right-wing platform, deride wastewater recycling as an unproven experiment. They call it “toilet to tap” or “poop water.”
A third challenger, who is backed by Democratic groups, argues that the science behind wastewater recycling is robust, citing expert support for a technology considered safe and reliable. His opponents, he says, are capitalizing on residents’ fears of contamination and downplaying the seriousness of Scottsdale’s looming water crisis.
“They’re using buzzwords and scare tactics,” Raoul Zubia, a retired banker, said of his conservative opponents, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a former state senator, and Barry Graham, an incumbent council member.
The dispute offers a colorful preview of the ways water is becoming increasingly politicized as scarcity forces local officials across the West to make difficult decisions and embrace unconventional solutions.
Scottsdale, a city of 240,000 northeast of Phoenix, is famous for its green golf courses and red rock peaks. It is an upscale destination for bachelorette parties and bar crawls, spas and shopping malls. But in wonkier circles, the city is also known as a leader in water treatment and engineering.
Nearly all American drinking water comes from lakes, rivers, reservoirs or underground aquifers. But Scottsdale Water, a city-operated utility, has been purifying wastewater for decades through a process with many steps and even more syllables — ozonation, membrane ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet photolysis. Scientists say the resulting product is among the cleanest water in the world.
The city currently sends much of the recycled water to about two dozen golf courses, which use it for irrigation. It pumps the remainder into an aquifer, where it is eventually drawn out as drinking water, a longstanding process known as indirect potable reuse.
City leaders wanted to go further, skipping the aquifer and mixing purified water with other sources before delivering it to residential taps. That’s known as direct potable reuse.
Only a few direct potable reuse facilities operate around the world, but more are in the works. Scottsdale’s would have been Arizona’s first.
But in June, with the state updating regulations and the issue turning partisan, the City Council froze funding for the project, even as neighboring Phoenix pushed forward.
Supporters were dismayed.
“You cannot choose ‘no water’ because you have unfounded fears about water quality,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a water policy expert at Arizona State University.
Ms. Ugenti-Rita would be the program’s most vocal critic if elected. The idea is “disgusting,” she said, and she is worried recycled water could make residents sick. She has also balked at the cost of infrastructure upgrades, which city staff recently estimated at more than $160 million.
“There’s a lot at stake,” Ms. Ugenti-Rita said. “We don’t want to be the next Flint, Mich. I don’t want short or long-term health effects. We have a reputation to consider.”
Mudslinging reached its peak ahead of the summer primary election, when Ms. Ugenti-Rita appeared in a social media video with the MAGA-aligned comedian Rob Schneider.
Mr. Schneider, who was in the “The Waterboy” and lives in Scottsdale, held a cup of liquid the color of a milky latte while criticizing “toilet to tap.” He referred to one of Ms. Ugenti-Rita’s primary opponents, Solange Whitehead, as “Sewage Solange.”
Ms. Whitehead, who grew up wanting to be a sewage engineer, was unfazed.
“I was pretty flattered,” Ms. Whitehead said as she sipped a pale ale made with Scottsdale’s recycled wastewater, part of a campaign to help the public overcome the “ick factor.”
Ms. Whitehead, an incumbent council member who ran on water issues, finished first in the July primary, securing another term on the board and avoiding a runoff on Tuesday. She said she was concerned that her opponents’ rhetoric will turn residents against a critical technology.
“When you rile up people against something, it spreads,” Ms. Whitehead said. “This is not a good time to politicize and to try to create distrust.”
At Scottsdale Water’s sprawling campus, Thyra Ryden-Diaz, the utility’s interim director, defended the wastewater recycling program and said sending treated water directly to taps would not differ much from what the city was already doing.
“All water is recycled,” Ms. Ryden-Diaz said. “I don’t think that people remember their third-grade water cycle graph.”
Still, she said, it would not be a panacea for Scottsdale because the city already reuses so much of its wastewater, and unless facilities are upgraded, there will not be much left to send to taps.
Scottsdale is not running out of water anytime soon, but surveys show Arizonans are concerned that state leaders aren’t doing enough to save their most precious resource. Max Vega, a 40-year-old who works in the mining industry, is one of them.
Drinking recycled wastewater “may disturb some people,” he said on a recent evening after walking his dog at a large Scottsdale desert preserve. “But if you do it the right way, under safe regulations, then so be it.”
For others, the idea is a harder sell. Corlan and Becky Fawcett, who were visiting Scottsdale for a conference, said knowing wastewater ran from their hotel faucet would not stop them from returning.
“But it might make me want to buy my water when I get here,” Mr. Fawcett said.
The couple, who live in Utah, another water-strapped state reliant on the Colorado River, acknowledged that such technology might someday come to their hometown.
“What’s the alternative?” Ms. Fawcett asked. “What’s the other option?”
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