What would it look like if you dumped over 50 MILLION GALLONS a month of treated waste water effluent on the desert to evaporate? It might just look like this.
In 2019, the City of Kingman reportedly spent over a million dollars to drill a reclaimed water injection well, in order to pump effluent from the Hilltop Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) back into the depleting Hualapai Basin aquifer.
According to a press release on the City’s website:
“This new well will replenish the local aquifer and bolster the City’s long-term water supplies. Using the reclaimed water produced at the Hilltop WWTP to recharge Kingman’s groundwater supply has the potential to produce a renewable resource of approximately 1.6 mgd, amounting to about 22% of the City’s current water demand of 5.9 mgd. This is perhaps the only renewable water resource that is readily available now for the City to supplement its supplies.”
The press release also stated that, “the capacity of the Hilltop WWTP is up to 5.1 million gallons per day (mgd), and is currently taking in 1.5 million gallons per day (mgd).” But the Kingman area population and therefore residential water use has grown considerably since 2019.
Reclaimed water injected at the Hilltop WWTP site was supposed to flow southward through the aquifer in the general direction of the City’s existing groundwater production wells. Rumor is the well is not online so effluent is being dumped.
In 2019, an Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) report stated that there was “insufficient groundwater to provide a reasonably safe supply for sustained irrigation of cultivated lands in the basin at the current and predicted rates of withdrawal.” The report also stated that the groundwater depletion was due to large scale agricultural irrigation
Then, a study performed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) determined in 2020 that the water supply would last longer than previously thought but mitigation practices needed to be implemented. As part of that study, the USGS implemented a revised aquifer monitoring program using monitoring wells.
The differences between the two assessments resulted from working with different water usage estimates. The USGS study calculated water usage of 130,000 acre-feet per year, whereas the previous estimate was 280,000-340,000 acre-feet per year.
Mohave County pursued and was granted an Irrigation Non-Expansion Area designation by ADWR in 2022, which did not affect current agriculture, but allows new irrigation only on fields of 2 acres or less. The State estimated the Hualapai Basin annual recharge at 10,000 acre-feet, and Kingman's annual use at 8,800 acre-feet. At that rate, 1 in 20 wells would run dry within 100 years.
Kingman and the surrounding area are wholly dependent on groundwater, making this wasted waste water, which the Mohave Free Press was told has been dumped for months now, especially disturbing. How much longer will it continue?