Jay Famiglietti, a longtime contributor to Ten Across, specializes in the use of satellite data to monitor the world’s groundwater mass. His team’s new findings focus on the U.S. Southwest—a region at the forefront of the nation’s water supply challenges and the complex balances between resource limitations and economic growth.

Some residents have become engaged in water talks and participated in a two-day workshop organized by ASU's Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. The program, called Impact Water-Arizona, also led to workshops in Cochise County two years ago to assist with scenario planning for their water issues. After that, locals created the Sulphur Springs Water Alliance. The workshop wasn't meant to draw a direct path to action then and there, but it helps build "a strong foundation for advocacy," said program director Susan Craig. 

“We know groundwater depletion is happening. We’ve known it for a long time,” said James Famiglietti, global futures professor at Arizona State University and lead author on the recent study. “The part that surprised me is the changes that happened over the last 10 years.”

“This is a carbon story and a water story because atmospheric carbon is being converted into food, using water as the medium,” said Enrique Vivoni, Fulton Professor of Hydrosystems Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment and the director of the Center for Hydrologic Innovations. “Our goal is between 7% to 15% water savings to demonstrate the water efficiency gains from better soil health.”

The groundwater loss is driven largely by over-pumping in the Lower Colorado River Basin, particularly in Arizona, Nevada, and California where regulation is minimal or nonexistent.

Professor Jay Famiglietti, the study's senior from Arizona State University, said: 'Everyone in the US should be worried about it, because we grow a lot of food in the Colorado River Basin and that's food that's used all over the entire country.' 

Kathleen Ferris, an architect of Arizona’s groundwater laws, said much more work is needed to protect groundwater.

“We are not on track,” said Ferris, who was not involved in the study. “We are way behind the eight ball, and I'm really sad that nothing seems to get done. We should have been thinking about this issue 25 years ago.”

Ferris is now a senior research fellow at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

“In short, it will become very expensive to pump that deeper groundwater on our current trajectory, so that only the wealthiest farmers and the biggest farms will be able to afford to pump that groundwater,” he said.

The effects are already being seen in communities like Wenden in La Paz County. Wells are running dry, and residents are already paying up to $130,000 for new ones.

“People used to say the Colorado River was the lifeblood of the Southwest US,” Arizona State professor Jay Famiglietti, the study’s senior author, told me. “Now it’s the groundwater. We need to make sure we take precautions to sustain that groundwater for multiple generations in the future.”

“We have to be worried,” Karem Abdelmohsen, the lead author of the study and a research scholar at Arizona State University, said. “This is really scary.”

That’s because the Colorado River basin is already struggling with water scarcity. Covering seven states, as well as parts of Mexico, it supplies water to about 40 million people and supports billions of dollars in agriculture.