GOOD|GOAT · PUBLISHED AUGUST 2026
Six city-owned golf courses.
28.6 billion gallons.
Zero reclaimed water.
Twenty-five years of Arizona Department of Water Resources filings for the six golf courses the City of Phoenix owns.
The volume
What six golf courses use
Six golf courses the City of Phoenix owns used 87,826 acre-feet of water between 2000 and 2024.
An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons — enough to cover an acre of ground a foot deep. Eighty-seven thousand of them comes to 28.6 billion gallons, or 3,513 acre-feet a year.
Put on a daily basis, across 117 holes and 729 acres of turf: 3.14 million gallons a day, every day, for twenty-five years.
Where the water came from
Share of 87,826 acre-feet — all six courses, 2000–2024
Golf courses in Arizona can irrigate with reclaimed wastewater — treated effluent that is not fit to drink and has no other use. Many do. Across twenty-five years of filings, these six courses reported none. Instead, 96.2% of the water came from sources of drinking-water quality.
Share of golf course water from reclaimed wastewater
Golf courses can irrigate with treated effluent. The share that does:
0 acre-feet reported, 2000–2024. Phoenix-area and Prescott AMA shares from 2018 reporting.
Nearly all of the water was of drinking quality; none of it was reclaimed.
What it would cost at the tap
The City of Phoenix charges residents $7.55 per 1,000 gallons at the medium-season inside-city rate. At that price, one year of the water these six courses use would cost about $8.6 million. Across twenty-five years, about $216 million.
The courses did not pay that. Irrigation-source water — SRP surface water, self-pumped groundwater — costs a fraction of metered city water. The figure is a replacement value: what the same volume costs the household that gets a bill.
Retail-rate value, not amounts billed. Applies the City of Phoenix rate schedule effective March 1, 2025, at the medium-season inside-city volume charge. Excludes the monthly service charge and the environmental charge, so the figures are conservative. Range across the three seasonal tiers: $7.5M–$9.4M a year.
At household rates, this volume would run about $8.6 million a year.
Measured in households
A Phoenix household uses roughly 0.35 acre-feet of water a year. On that basis, the six courses use the annual household water of 10,037 homes — about 1,544 homes per eighteen holes.
0.35 acre-feet per household is the assumption used in this analysis, not a City of Phoenix figure.
Course by course
Twenty-five-year totals, acre-feet
| Course | Holes | Turf acres | 25-yr total (AF) | Annual avg (AF) | Households / yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Encanto | 27 | 181.4 | 19,691 | 788 | 2,250 |
| Cave Creek | 18 | 166.9 | 18,312 | 732 | 2,093 |
| Papago | 18 | 116.7 | 16,480 | 659 | 1,883 |
| GCU (ex-Maryvale) | 18 | 122.6 | 15,807 | 632 | 1,807 |
| Aguila | 27 | 113.2 | 14,359 | 574 | 1,641 |
| Palo Verde | 9 | 28.6 | 3,178 | 127 | 363 |
| Total | 117 | 729.4 | 87,826 | 3,513 | 10,037 |
All six courses sit on land the City of Phoenix owns. Four — Aguila, Cave Creek, Encanto and Palo Verde — are city-operated. GCU Golf Course, formerly Maryvale, is operated by Grand Canyon University under a thirty-year operating agreement with the City. Papago is operated by Arizona State University under a separate agreement with the City.
Encanto and Cave Creek together account for more than a third of the total.
Cave Creek
Cave Creek Golf Course drew 99.9% of its water from groundwater — 18,295 acre-feet across twenty-five years. It is the only one of the six to run on a single source for the entire period.
It also carries the most turf per hole of any city course: 9.3 acres, nearly twice the ADWR standard of five acres per hole for courses built after 1985.
A 2018 non-potable pipeline project gave the course access to Arizona Canal water as a backup supply. Reported data shows groundwater at essentially 100% through 2024.
One course, one source, twenty-five years.
Six different supply mixes
The six courses draw on water very differently. Cave Creek runs on groundwater. Aguila and GCU run mostly on SRP surface water. Papago is the only one leaning on Colorado River water through the CAP. What they share is the last column.
| Course | Surface | Groundwater | CAP | Blended | Spill | In-lieu | Other | Reclaimed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Encanto | 63.2% | 27.9% | — | 6.0% | 2.8% | — | — | 0% |
| Cave Creek | — | 99.9% | — | 0.1% | — | — | — | 0% |
| Papago | 32.7% | — | 42.9% | 17.3% | 2.9% | 4.3% | — | 0% |
| GCU (ex-Maryvale) | 73.5% | 22.9% | — | — | 2.9% | — | 0.6% | 0% |
| Aguila | 78.2% | — | 14.1% | 1.5% | 3.4% | 1.6% | 1.2% | 0% |
| Palo Verde | 67.7% | 21.9% | — | 6.3% | 4.1% | — | — | 0% |
Six courses, six supply mixes, none of them reclaimed.
Turf and water intensity
The Arizona Department of Water Resources sets a water-duty standard for golf courses in the Phoenix AMA built after 1985: no more than five acres of turf per hole, at an application rate of 4.6 acre-feet per acre. An eighteen-hole course built under those rules gets ninety acres of turf.
Five of these six courses predate 1985 and are regulated under legacy allotments instead. The standard is useful as a yardstick, not as a compliance test.
Acre-feet of water per turf acre per year. Benchmark for context, not a compliance finding — five of these six courses predate the 1985 standard.
| Course | AF per turf acre / yr | Acres per hole | Annual avg vs. own allotment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papago | 5.65 | 6.5 | +16.2% |
| GCU (ex-Maryvale) | 5.16 | 6.8 | +4.1% |
| Aguila | 5.07 | 4.2 | +5.0% |
| Palo Verde | 4.44 | 3.2 | −15.5% |
| Cave Creek | 4.39 | 9.3 | −4.6% |
| Encanto | 4.34 | 6.7 | −18.9% |
| All six | 4.82 | 6.2 | −2.7% |
Three of the six courses used more than their own allotment on average; three used less. Across all six, use ran 2.7% under the combined allotment.
Three courses run above their allotment, three below — and four of six exceed the post-1985 turf standard.
Methodology and sources
- Source. Arizona Department of Water Resources Industrial Source Data, “Facility Turf — Golf Course” subsector, Phoenix AMA. Six City of Phoenix–owned facilities, 2000–2024, as compiled in GOOD|GOAT’s summary analysis.
- Units. One acre-foot = 325,851 gallons, about 326,000.
- Household equivalent. 0.35 acre-feet per household per year — the assumption used in this analysis, not a City figure.
- Cost figures. City of Phoenix water rate schedule effective March 1, 2025: inside-city volume charges of $6.58 (low season), $7.55 (medium) and $8.19 (high) per 1,000 gallons. Excludes the monthly service charge and the $0.62/CCF environmental charge, so the dollar figures are conservative. A replacement-value comparison, not amounts billed.
- Turf acreage is a single value per course, so per-acre intensity is an approximation.
- ADWR standards. The 4.6 acre-feet per acre application rate and five-acre-per-hole turf limit apply to Phoenix AMA courses built after 1985. Five of these six predate that date and are regulated under legacy allotments. Presented as context, not as a violation.
- Reclaimed-water comparison. Phoenix-area (about 21%) and Prescott AMA (75%) reclaimed shares are from 2018 reporting.
- Figures may not sum exactly due to rounding.
City of Phoenix water rate schedule · WRRC — golf course water use in Arizona · Cronkite News, 2018 · GCU Golf Course history · ADWR Industrial Program · ADWR 5th Management Plan
Get the data
Everything on this page comes from four tables. They are published here in full so the analysis can be checked, reused, or extended.