By james art RIO VERDE, Arizona (AZFamily)— Residents in the Rio Verde foothills are looking for a new water source after state regulators put a lottery limit on new customers. This comes after the city of Scottsdale cut off water to the foothills of the Rio Verde as part of its water conservation plans.
This left hundreds of homeowners without drinking water. Gov. Katie Hobbs stepped in and signed a bill last summer forcing Scottsdale to continue delivering water to the foothills for the next three years until EPCOR takes over.
“Originally they were getting water from a pipeline in Scottsdale, which is still the case today on an interim basis until we build the necessary infrastructure to support them,” said EPCOR’s Rebecca Stenholm.
In addition to the 1,273 existing homeowners who switched utilities to EPCOR water, the Arizona Corporation Commission said it can only accommodate 150 more customers who plan to build there.
“Obviously we didn’t want to be in the position of having to pick and choose, and we know there are a lot of people out there,” Stenholm said.
Two hundred and thirty property owners applied for the lottery, but residents like David Weber were not selected. “They’re starving people of water and it’s really unfortunate and it was completely unnecessary,” Weber said.
Weber has owned his property for three years and dreamed of building on the property.
Now, without a water resource, he said that could change.
“This deal affected everybody, even people with wells and people like me who weren’t really running out there to build something right away. But I certainly didn’t want the rug pulled out from under me as far as having the potential to build something on top of it,” Weber said.
EPCOR said the new pipeline project could take 24 to 36 months. Those selected in the lottery will have to pay a connection fee of $24,000 to offset construction costs.
The non-elect will have to find a third party to get water. More information about the project can be found on the EPCOR website.
See a spelling or grammar mistake in our story? Please click here to report.
Have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send for us here with a brief description.
Copyright 2024 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.