A wealthy Phoenix suburb killed a 28-year-old wastewater recycling program after political candidates branded purified water as sewage, even as the Colorado River hits record lows and federal officials plan mandatory cuts.
Scottsdale, Arizona, had spent nearly three decades building one of the most advanced water purification systems in the Southwest. The facility at the Scottsdale Water Campus could serve 60,000 households. Local breweries bought the recycled water. Around 7,500 residents sampled it at tours and public events. The city planned to add the purified wastewater directly to its drinking supply by 2027, a step that water engineers across the region considered a model worth copying.
Then came the campaign ads. In May, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a former Republican state lawmaker running for Scottsdale's city council, appeared alongside actor Rob Schneider in a spot that featured a glass of clear water next to a glass of brown liquid. The ad accused her opponents of pushing residents to drink sewage water, a charge those opponents denied. Ugenti-Rita did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press, CBS News reported.
By June, the Scottsdale city council had voted to gut the program. Members replaced funding for the recycling initiative and other water projects with a vague $100 million allocation for "new water sources and supplies." The original 2027 target for direct potable reuse, the technical term for adding purified wastewater to the tap supply, was dead.
Scottsdale, a city of 250,000, draws 70 percent of its water from the Colorado River, more than any other city its size or larger in Arizona and California. That dependence matters now more than ever. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two key barometers of the river's health, hit record lows this summer. A federal proposal outlines combined water cuts for Arizona, California, and Nevada that could affect supplies serving more than 25 million people annually through 2036.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has committed more than $300 million to advanced water purification projects across the arid West. At least four other facilities in Arizona were looking to Scottsdale's expertise as a template. The city pioneered its system in 1998 and had been refining it for 28 years.
And the council shelved it over a campaign ad with a glass of brown water.
Bryan Cassens, the assistant senior director of Scottsdale Water who runs the recycling program, put the stakes plainly:
"It's so important to protect and reuse water in the Southwest. Here we already know it all. We've been doing it for 28 years."
Cassens said the facility is still operating as normal, but the plan to move purified water directly into the drinking supply is off the table for now. Scottsdale Water officials said they will present new options to the council in October.
Incumbent councilman Barry Graham, who backed the funding change, called the advanced water purification program costly and dismissed it as an "alarmist" overreaction to drought. He characterized direct potable reuse as "a last resort in a water crisis, not now."
Graham also offered a revealing admission about his own constituents' capacity to evaluate the science:
"I can't just assume that every visitor and resident is going to trust the experts and is even going to listen to the experts."
That framing, we can't expect people to listen to experts, so let's not try, is a concession dressed up as pragmatism. It treats voter ignorance as a fixed condition rather than a failure of leadership. Graham and his allies had the option of defending the program on its merits. They chose instead to accommodate the loudest critics and redirect $100 million toward an undefined search for alternative water sources that do not yet exist.
Less than one percent of Scottsdale's liquid waste comes from toilets, according to water officials. The "poop water" label was a political weapon, not a description. The purification process that Scottsdale had refined over nearly three decades was designed to produce water cleaner than what already flows from the tap in most American cities. Opponents never engaged that fact. They ran a scare campaign and won.
Cynthia Campbell, a former water resource management adviser for Phoenix, did not mince words about the political calculation behind the decision:
"It's not really a good time to start being selective. Are you really going to play political games with the one thing that makes it possible to live in the desert?"
Ben Grumbles, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, a nonpartisan group of state and local environmental agency leaders, echoed the frustration. He argued that communities should not abandon long-term investments in public health and sustainability for short-term political gain:
"It can be frustrating when there are politicians scoring a cheap, fast point. I hope that over time, the facts will bear out."
Hope is not a water policy. And the facts already bore out, Scottsdale had 28 years of operational data and a facility large enough to serve a quarter of its households. What it lacked was a council willing to defend the investment against a campaign ad starring a comedian holding a glass of brown liquid.
An AP VoteCast survey during the 2022 midterm elections polled more than 3,000 Arizona voters on water confidence. Just over half said they were "very" or "somewhat" confident the state would have enough water over the next ten years. Forty-seven percent said they were "not too" or "not at all" confident. That split predates the latest record lows on the Colorado River and the federal proposals now on the table.
Meanwhile, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is still writing the rules that would govern how purified water gets mixed into drinking supplies. Randall Matas, who leads the agency's Water Quality Division, said the new regulations, which include tracking chemicals and contaminants not covered by federal rules, will not be finished until early 2027. Phoenix and Tucson water officials have said some of the new state requirements unnecessarily raise costs.
So the regulatory framework is incomplete, the federal government is planning mandatory river cuts through 2036, reservoir levels are at historic lows, and the one city in Arizona that had spent three decades proving purified wastewater works just pulled the plug because a former state lawmaker and a sitcom actor held up a dirty glass on camera.
Conservatives rightly distrust government programs that waste money and solve problems that don't exist. But water scarcity in the desert Southwest is not an invented crisis. The Colorado River is shrinking. Federal cuts are coming. Scottsdale built a working system, tested it for nearly three decades, and had a clear path to expanding it. The program was not some green fantasy cooked up by bureaucrats in Washington. It was local infrastructure, built with local expertise, serving local residents.
What killed it was not principled fiscal conservatism. It was election-year cowardice, candidates who found it easier to scare voters than to explain a water treatment process. The "poop water" label was crafted to bypass reason and trigger disgust. It worked. And now a city of 250,000 people, in one of the driest regions in the country, has traded a proven system for a $100 million IOU with no plan attached.
Ugenti-Rita refused to answer questions from the Associated Press. Graham admitted he couldn't expect residents to listen to experts. The council voted to defund the program. Nobody in Scottsdale's political class has explained where the replacement water will come from, what it will cost, or when it will arrive.
Accountability means answering for consequences, not just intentions. The candidates who ran on "poop water" owe Scottsdale residents more than a slogan, they owe them a water supply. And the Colorado River is not going to wait for the next election cycle to keep shrinking.
