Current mitigation plans include a 66 inch pipeline from a 24th st water station north into north Phoenix to make up for future CAP losses due to climate change.
This 66 inch pipeline will eventually carry Salt River Project (Salt and Verde River Water) water from a water treatment plant(24th St pump station) in north Phoenix further up into north Phoenix neighborhoods as a hedge against further drawdowns in the CAP water supply.
The planned amount of water flow per day is projected at 75 million gallons per day when fully operational (fall ’22).
The main storage reservoir for the Salt River system is Lake Roosevelt, which is 68% full (June ’22). Other Salt River reservoirs include Saguaro and Apache Lakes. In total, the 3 lakes in the SRP system hold1,250,000 acre-feet of storage capacity.
One acre-foot of water will supply about 2 families per year in the Phoenix area. ( )
One acre-foot of water is equivalent to 326,000 gallons of water.
Therefore, there are currently 407,500 million gallons of water available in the SRP system.
We can then calculate about 5,430. days of water (or about 14.8 years) available in the SRP system for the whole Phoenix area, assuming no further recharge of the system. Of course, this still doesn’t account for the total water currently being supplied to the southern area of Phoenix through the SRP system canals, which is: 9,724 gal/second or 840,153,600 gallons per day.
Therefore, the allotted Drought Pipeline Project flow of 75 million gallons per day is only 8.9 % of the total current SRP flow from the reservoirs. .