M&A helps celebrate the launch of the Liberty Aquifer Replenishment Facility

M&A’s Jeff Meyer recently had the opportunity to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Liberty Aquifer Replenishment Facility (LARF) in Goodyear, which began operating in early 2017. The ceremony represents the culmination of a 6-year effort to identify and develop a suitable site for recharging reclaimed water within the service area of Liberty Utilities. Meyer led various hydrogeologic investigations that were key to this effort; in addition to siting the facility, M&A was charged with evaluating its recharge capacity, supporting its design, and preparing applications for regulatory permits. We are also providing support for facility operations and monitoring, a task that has entailed installing wells, piezometers, and a telemetry system.

Built by Liberty Utilities and the Central Arizona Project (CAP), the LARF is unique because it represents Arizona’s first “public-private” reclaimed-water recharge facility.The LARF has the capacity to recharge up to 6,000 acre-feet (AF) per year, with 2,400 AF/yr of this to be leased to CAGRD through 2116. According to CAP, the ground-breaking partnership is a win-win: “CAP gets an affordable 100-year water supply for the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District (CAGRD) and Liberty Utilities gets a cost-effective way to manage its effluent in a sustainable manner that provides multiple benefits to its customers.”

The recharge water for this innovative project comes from Liberty’s Palm Valley Water Reclamation Facility. Reclaimed water is becoming increasingly important to many water providers. Because it is the only supply that grows with population, it is a highly reliable, local source for aquifer replenishment.

You can download a fact sheet about the project here.