A new water plant was dedicated in Mesa Saturday. Built with bond money that was approved by voters in 2014, the $126 million Signal Butte facility will allow southeast Mesa to continue to grow, according to city officials.

Mesa Water Resources Director Joe West said other plants were too far away to effectively service the region.

“That’s a long way to get water down here to where the growth is and so we realized years ago that we needed to plan for growth in the Southeast area," West said. "So now these two plants will work together and both these plants take water off to the Central Arizona Project system, which is Colorado River water.”

West said the plant can produce 24 million gallons of water per day with the capacity to double the output when necessary.