New year in Goodyear: West Valley city gets full CAP deliveries

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Goodyear Water Treatment Plant

This Stakeholder Spotlight is a collaboration between CAP and the City of Goodyear

For about the past 15 years, the Colorado River water delivered by Central Arizona Project to the City of Goodyear – approximately 11,000 acre-feet per year – had been stored to offset the city’s groundwater use.

Other cities with the same municipal and industrial (M&I) allocation treat and deliver water to residents. Not so with Goodyear: there simply wasn’t a direct connection to the city’s service area from the CAP canal.

Thanks to vision, collaboration, and investments in infrastructure, things have changed.

On Jan. 4, 2022, Goodyear’s new water treatment plant was substantially completed. The new plant, which has the capacity to process 8 million gallons per day, serves 19,900 residents, and has a pipeline connection to the Salt River Project (SRP) system that allows the city to take its CAP water through an agreement with SRP.

Collaboration made it happen, with numerous agencies including SRP now involved in the ordering process. The deliveries will help the city meet its groundwater management goals, as well as help support the city’s rapid expected growth.

Barbara Chappell, City of Goodyear Public Works Deputy Director, said Goodyear is the ninth fastest growing city in the nation. “We just turned 75 years old and have reached a population of 100,000, but we are only about 13% built out,” she said.

In addition to its CAP municipal and industrial allocation of 10,742 acre-feet per year, Goodyear has a Gila River Indian Community lease of 7,000 acre-feet of CAP water annually. This new delivery of surface water will be treated with several technologies, including sand-ballasted clarification, ozonation, filtration and disinfection.

The treatment plant will also help Goodyear manage its water portfolio by bringing the city’s CAP supplies into its service area, which will be counted by state regulators toward Goodyear’s designation of assured water supply. 

The project brings yet another change: additional cooperation on Goodyear’s water orders.

“It makes (water orders) more complex and collaborative,” Chappell said. “Prior to the water treatment plant, Goodyear recharged and recovered its CAP water. Now it has to coordinate with both CAP, SRP and RID (Roosevelt Irrigation District) to wheel, store, and recover that water.”

The collaborative ordering process signifies a vital, new CAP delivery of surface water – just in time for a new year in Goodyear.

“The groundwater system was limited by physical availability,” Chappell said. “This project brings the city’s Colorado River supplies into the service area to help alleviate that issue.”

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