Pinal Today

The $3.5 million for waterline construction in Maricopa that’s in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 2022 spending plan will help with construction and design even though no designs have been submitted to the city for review.

The project’s goal is to extend the service lines of Global Water, the city’s water utility, to the western portion of Maricopa, the Maricopa Monitor reported. The spending plan comes on the heels of passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The act authorized “funds for federal-aid highways, highway safety programs and transit programs, and for other purposes.”

A water resource management company with a corporate office in Phoenix, Global Water Resources, Inc., provides “water, wastewater and recycled water utility services,” its website said. The company is working with the city in “the planning and deployment of utility infrastructure.”

“The planning, engineering and construction of regional utilities can take a number of years to complete,” Jon Corwin, vice president and general manager at Global Water, told the Maricopa Monitor.

By applying for funding, the City of Maricopa planned to bring water infrastructure to growth areas “to the south and west within the city’s municipal planning area.”

With a population of approximately 62,000, Maricopa had a 42.5% increase in population from the 2010 Census, its website said.

“Maricopa is approximately 43 square miles, with a planning area of 233 square miles,” the website said.

The Army Corps of Engineers received $22.81 billion in supplemental funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, a news release said. That funding is for “the Civil Works studies, projects and programs” the Corps will implement in Fiscal Year 2022.

Global Water Resources owns 17 water and wastewater utilities in communities mostly in metropolitan Phoenix, its company profile said.

“As of Dec. 31, 2020, we have 49,158 active service connections,” the profile said. “Our regionally planned service areas are large enough to ultimately serve hundreds of thousands of service connections.”