Arizona’s Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters spoke as a guest at one of Kari Lake’s “Ask Me Anything Tour” events Tuesday, touching on the state’s looming water crisis and how he believes he can fix it.
“Let’s get a U.S. Senator for Arizona who’s going to fight tooth and nail,” Masters said. “That’s something I want to do. Send someone with sharp elbows who’s going to fight for our water, right? That’s the political fix.”
Masters said this in response to the recent announcement from the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) that it is cutting Arizona’s water supply from the Colorado River by 592,000 acre-feet in 2023, roughly 21 percent of the state’s annual allotment. However, California will lose none of its supply when the cuts hit. Masters pointed to this issue as exactly why Arizona needs a fighter in the Senate, because Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly was there and allegedly did nothing to stop this water cut.
Masters said this made Kelly look more like the third senator of California than Arizona’s second. Moreover, he bashed Kelly for seeming to take the water crisis too lightly. While speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Kelly told host Jake Tapper that the water crisis in Arizona is “not existential” and that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Kelly voted for, provides $4 billion for drought relief to fix the problem.
However, aside from criticizing his opponent, Masters brought his planned solution to the table, which included desalination plants.
“I have a tech background. Technology is the way out of this. You know, I think the future is desalination plants in the Pacific Ocean. Desalination plants in the Sea of Cortez, powered by nuclear reactors and pipelines. We need to innovate our way out of it,” Masters said.
Furthermore, Masters stated half the money Democrats used in the Inflation Reduction Act would be enough to make a project like this a reality. Desalination may also solve the issue of which state gets a share of the Colorado River. While speaking at the 2022 Arizona Senate Debate, Masters said California should not have its straw in the Colorado River and instead have desalination plants to use the Pacific Ocean as its water source while Arizona reclaims its share of the river.
Ultimately, Masters said he wants Arizona to be a place people can continue living in for years.
“It [drought] is an absolutely existential crisis. We need to solve it; otherwise, there’s no future in Arizona. I want my three boys – they’re 8, 6, and 2 – I want them to choose to live in Arizona in 30 years when they’re my age, but you can’t do it if you go to the faucet and no water comes out,” Masters said.
.@bgmasters: "He (@SenMarkKelly) actually went on TV recently and said, 'Our water crisis is not an existential crisis.' I'm sorry, what? It is absolutely an existential crisis. We need to solve it; otherwise, there's no future in Arizona." pic.twitter.com/ggFL2d6leG
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 12, 2022
The Arizona Sun Times’ Wednesday request to the Arizona Department of Water Resources for more information on desalination did not receive a response.
As reported by ABC 15, Masters is not the only one in Arizona looking to desalination as a solution to the water crisis. Governor Doug Ducey pointed to Israel as a real-world success story of desalination plants watering a nation. Israel uses five plants to provide most tap water to its nine million residents.
In July, Ducey signed SB 1740 into law, which provides $1 billion for Arizona’s water future and paves the way for the state to invest in technologies like desalination for its future security.
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Neil Jones is a reporter for The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Neil on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
