Conservation examination

Whiskey’s for fighting, water’s for saving … State executions are back … And another edition of “stupid criminals.”

A well of millions of dollars for water conservation projects has run dry after the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority finished allocating the grants last week. 

WIFA became the custodian of $200 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars in the Water Conservation Grant Fund in late 2022. In less than a year, it has allocated that money for 189¹ projects that public entities and some non-governmental organizations will carry out over the next couple of years. The recipients ranged from cities and towns to mobile home parks and elementary schools. 

In 2022, Arizona’s legislators put $1 billion into a water augmentation fund, but Democrats' approval hinged on an additional $200 million for water conservation. The federal government had just warned of incoming Colorado River cuts, and Republicans were banking on a costly desalination plan. 

Now, local entities plan to use the money² on things like removing water-intensive lawns, updating water treatment facilities and using smart meters.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, describes this as a “whimsical depiction of Arizona's water conservation funding in the style of Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave.”

This was WIFA’s first time allocating such a large chunk of money. For the past 30 years, the finance authority has focused on administering the state’s revolving funds that routinely come in from the federal government. The group held its first conservation meeting on April 19 last year, and through a series of bureaucratic committee meetings, public input and poring over applications, decided who would get the funds, according to WIFA Assistant Director Chelsea McGuire. 

“This has been maybe a little bit of an under-the-radar program, but the impact that it's going to have across the state is monumental,” McGuire said. “Every state understands right now that water is an existential issue. And we are all trying to prove that we are good stewards of this extremely precious resource.” 

Now that the final numbers are in, we’ve compiled some key data points to show you how the $200 million was distributed. Click on each chart to get a better view. 

Click here for a spreadsheet of all the grants awarded.

The majority of projects were updating water meters and replacing waterlines. Lake Havasu City got $3 million to upgrade its water meters to radio-transmitting smart meters.

Each project was given a calculated estimate of the number of acre-feet of water it would save at a high and low range.³ Even though most of the projects are in “Advanced Meters/System Upgrades,” that category has an average acre-foot savings of 1,867 to 2,871 among 72 projects, far below the top category of 115,607 to 173,546 acre-feet for agriculture systems. 

McGuire told us the board charged with allocating the money at first wanted to give preference to the projects with the highest acre-foot savings, and the most cost-effective proposals were for places with high water usage, like agricultural upgrades.

But the board didn’t want to focus on one type of project, nor one part of the state, she said. Members also considered potential behavioral changes within the holistic benefits of a project. For example, being able to track water use in real-time through a smart water meter can help consumers be more mindful of their water use. 

The total range of acre-feet saved for all 189 projects is about 3.3 million to 5.6 million, meaning enough to supply water for between 6 million and 11 million homes.

Entities in Maricopa County got the most projects at 55, while Greenlee’s town of Duncan got one project to replace corroded pipes and install a system to detect leaks and automate data. 

Tucson received the most grants of any city with six separate disbursements totaling more than $11 million to replace turf, update meters, recharge projects and retrofit affordable housing units with newer appliances. Phoenix came in second with about $6 million to install more water-efficient fixtures and remove turf.

Back on the table: Attorney General Kris Mayes said she intends to seek warrants for death penalty executions next year, per a letter she sent to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell that the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger and Jimmy Jenkins obtained. Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs halted executions in early 2023 to review the state’s procedures for implementing them, and Mayes wrote in the letter that she expects the investigation to close soon. There are 112 people on Arizona’s death row. 

We only investigate shame chants: The House Ethics Committee threw out an ethics complaint against Republican Rep. Austin Smith after he was accused of forging more than 100 signatures on his nomination petitions, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy writes. He dropped his reelection bid after his signatures were challenged and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office received a complaint about the alleged forgeries. But House Ethics Chair Rep. Joseph Chaplik said he’s not pursuing the complaint submitted by four Democratic representatives because “the Committee is not a law enforcement or prosecutorial arm of government.” Meanwhile, West Valley Republicans voted on Smith’s replacement, but they missed the deadline to put a replacement on the ballot, per KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky. Now, they’re back to running a write-in during the primary and hoping they earn at least 527 votes to qualify for the November election.  

Someone has to be first: Pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman was the first of 18 defendants to appear in court for Mayes’ series of fake electors charges, and he pleaded not guilty to nine counts of various criminal charges like conspiracy and fraud, the Washington Post’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports. Eastman is accused of pressuring Arizona lawmakers to undo Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, and several more defendants are scheduled for arraignments tomorrow. 

Check yourself: House Speaker Ben Toma, Senate President Warren Petersen and the Republican National Committee are asking a federal judge to suspend her own ruling that rescinded a requirement for "satisfactory evidence of citizenship'' to vote while they appeal it to a higher court, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. Their attorney acknowledges it will be harder for Republicans to win with the ruling in place, but not that it would’ve disenfranchised 35,273 Arizonans who used a federal voter registration to vote in the 2020 election — when Trump lost by 10,457 votes. 

Called it: Former Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez, who resigned in April, is running for Phoenix City Council, the Republic’sTaylor Seely reports. Rumors he was running for the seat died out when Councilmember Carlos Galindo-Elvira took over, but Quiñonez filed paperwork to run last week. Democratic state Sen. Anna Hernandez is also running for the same seat.

Closing arguments today: Lawyers representing the man accused of fatally shooting University of Arizona Professor Thomas Meixner heard more from a psychologist who evaluated accused shooter Murad Dervish after the shooting, KVOA’s Megan Spector reports. Dervish is using an insanity defense, but his lawyers are questioning the psychologist’s diagnosis of him post-shooting. Closing arguments are set for today, after which the jury will begin deliberating.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani got a little ahead of his skis this weekend, taunting AG Kris Mayes for not being able to find him and serve him with the paperwork for his criminal indictment in Arizona. 

Of course, he basically streams his whereabouts and was hosting a big birthday bash in Florida with Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and others. So Mayes’ agents served him at his birthday party. 

Happy Birthday, Rudy!

1. Two recipients declined the award, but we’re not calculating it that way because we already did the math.

2. The money will be distributed through a reimbursement process and recipients have to provide an additional 25% of the total grant in their own money.

3. An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons, or enough to supply two average households for a year, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.