"It’s total absurdity,” Sonoran Gov. Alfonso Durazo said n a news conference last week, responding to the assertion that Sonoran officials had already given support to the project’s backers.
“At no time was there talk of the provision of desalination to supply water to Arizona. At no time,” he said. A week prior, Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded briefly to a reporter’s question about the IDE proposal. IDE’s 46-page project proposal states that the company “has done its due diligence to ensure that the Sonoran government is supportive of the project moving forward.”
Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | Omny Studio “It’s not usually how it would be done. It’s done delicately,” he said. “But of course there will be.” IDE, which operates desalination plants across the world, including in Carlsbad, Calif., hopes to eventually expand the plant to pump 1 million acre-feet of water to Arizona each year. It would also provide water to the Sonoran cities of Nogales, Hermosillo, Sonoyta and Puerto Peñasco, known in Arizona as Rocky Point.
WIFA director Chuck Podolak said on Friday that in-depth analysis of IDE’s proposal is only just beginning.