Little Green Valley Fen’s restoration was completed in April 2026, but the accounts cited here do not provide post-restoration measurements showing how the wetland’s water levels or flows have changed. The project is an upstream watershed intervention, not a documented new source of drinking water for Phoenix.
The distinction matters because Marcus Selig of the National Forest Foundation estimated that the work could return about 435 million liters of water annually to a more natural system, according to ABC15 Arizona. That is an estimate of a watershed benefit—not a measured amount delivered to Valley customers. The available accounts do not establish how much water the restored site will retain or how that might affect downstream supply.
A local repair with downstream connections
The $1.2 million project addressed erosion at the groundwater-fed fen in the Tonto National Forest near Payson. A channel had concentrated water that previously spread across the wet meadow, threatening the conditions that keep it saturated year-round. Historical road construction and peat extraction contributed to the damage, ABC15 reported.
Partners used a stage-zero, process-based approach: reshaping the landscape’s gradient and reconnecting the meadow with its floodplain so water can spread across the area and infiltrate the ground, according to the National Forest Foundation. The work covered about 70 acres, including roughly 45 acres of wetland, ABC15 reported…