Arizona Water for All: Leveraging social relationships to drive meaningful change in water-insecure communities

Without exception, water is necessary for life. In the midst of an Arizona summer, this becomes increasingly obvious as temperatures soar and residents rely on safe water to cool down and stay alive. Even so, each day thousands of people across the state struggle to secure access to water for drinking and hygiene.

In Florence, Arizona, a community southeast of the bustling Phoenix-metro area, residents are struggling to cope with frequent water shut offs. It is also possible that contaminants, like E. Coli or arsenic, may exist in the decentralized water systems – meaning primarily those not maintained by a city or municipal water utility – that are common here. 

This type of water insecurity is familiar not just on the outskirts of Florence, but across the state. While there is no cause for immediate concern, and households often have less contaminants in their water than they might assume, not the other way around, having comprehensive knowledge about water quality is important for making informed water treatment decisions.

Arizona Water for All (AW4A), part of the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, will soon launch its first major engineering project testing decentralized water systems in Florence. AW4A was founded to pursue sustained water-security for the state’s most water-insecure communities. 

Water-insecure communities may be dealing with water shut-offs, inability to afford safe water, lack of functional infrastructure, groundwater depletion which affects well water levels and myriad other issues accelerated by the pressures of climate change. By testing wells, AW4A can provide households with comprehensive information about their water quality. 

Laura Castro-Diaz, AW4A lead postdoctoral researcher, and Dylan Diaz-Infante, AW4A doctoral research student, will both be involved in the initial roll-out of engineering interventions. They are interested in securing safe, sustainable water access for households that are currently disconnected from municipal water systems, either by choice or by unaffordability, and finding out how people cope in their daily lives when access to water is precarious. 

Castro-Diaz and Diaz-Infante are both dedicated to working with communities to improve their water security, which in part stems from their respective work in other communities inside and outside the US. While community dynamics across the world are culturally unique, there is often a shared underlying sense of social responsibility that both researchers have encountered in different contexts. 

“We share water. We keep in touch with neighbors,” said Diaz-Infante. “We make sure to bring water to the elderly neighbor who lives alone when they can't pay their water bill or when their pipes are cut off.” 

This idea of sharing water between neighbors without expectation of direct monetary compensation is an example of what is known as a “moral economy.” Water-sharing is a practice documented in water-insecure communities across the world that entails people giving water to neighbors and other people in their community when their access to water becomes compromised.

“We have a right to live and we need water,” said Diaz-Infante. “So what happens when people slip through the cracks? And how can we make sure that we seal those cracks?” 

While people often think of ensuring water security through physical infrastructure like wells and pipes, the social infrastructure that ensures people have access to functional water sharing networks can be just as valuable. 

“I think of moral economies as a kind of grassroots approach to community resource management, and that's incredibly important in a hot state like Arizona,” said Diaz-Infante. “I think the moral economy will be a key way for water insecure communities who don't have access to formal, modern water infrastructure to cope with a hotter and drier future. It is critical to fill in gaps where our city-oriented water infrastructure doesn't reach.”

The AW4A team is working to support the development and maintenance of social infrastructure to enhance the long-term success of any physical work done by engaging in outreach with groups like churches, schools and social clubs – all who have deep ties with community members and are committed to strengthening their well-being, even if not directly to address resource scarcity. 

This outreach can be challenging because there is a general misconception that water-insecurity does not exist in the global north, Castro-Diaz noted, which can create a barrier to gaining support for the work. In addition, the phenomenon of “participation fatigue” sometimes means communities are wary of participating in projects like those AW4A is undertaking because they are not automatically seen as beneficial to their communities, especially when their expectations for significant change have been unmet in the past. 

“As researchers, we haven't always done a great job involving people in our work in meaningful ways,” said Castro-Diaz. “We are trying to do that differently. It’s going to be a challenge because we need to create that point of trust with communities to show them that our relationship is going to be meaningful.”

To better cultivate social infrastructure that promotes practices like water-sharing, the AW4A team strives to, first and foremost, create trusting relationships that can sustain networks of symbiotic connections. In addition to collaborating with community groups, this work is largely done through building a partner network of organizations with a commitment to serving community members and a history of on-the-ground relationship-building. 

“We all deserve access to clean, affordable and sustainable water,” says Castro-Diaz. “And that's not happening in all communities, yet.” 

As we look into the future, in Florence and all communities that we work in, AW4A’s social and engineering interventions will remain committed to being co-created by community members themselves – who know their needs and the possible solutions that fit them better than an outsider ever could. 

By pursuing deeply integrative, participatory methods that work from the ground-up, we hope to create networks for resource-sharing and infrastructure development that make a sustained impact on water-insecurity for generations to come. 

About the author: Daniela Sherrill is the community researcher for Arizona Water for All. She received her bachelor’s degree in sustainability with a minor in civic engagement from Northern Arizona University in 2020. Before joining AW4A, she worked in Tucson as a community organizer for campaigns that raised the minimum wage for workers across the state. She hopes to use her community organizing and engagement experience to cultivate lasting empowerment within Arizona’s most water-insecure communities.

Climate change Groundwater Public engagement Water supply