Stanton credited ASU for its work in researching the water crisis, and one of the university’s top experts, Dave White, director of the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, told the crowd about the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. “Our goal is to deliver actionable solutions and immediate impact that strengthen water resilience and economic competitiveness,” White said.

“The risk of damaging post-fire debris flows is increasing as the climate changes, because we are seeing stronger storms, in between more intense dry times, that can lead to instability in previously burned areas,” says Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire expert at Arizona State University. “At the same time, wildfires themselves are also burning more intensely, leaving behind fire-affected soils that can repel water and little vegetation to keep slopes intact.”

“I grew up in hurricane culture and I experienced major storms like Hurricane Andrew,” said Wutich, an Arizona State University President's Professor and director of ASU’s Center for Global Health. “And because I lived in a neighborhood where we had very strong social support networks, I felt that social infrastructure was a very visible way to survive,” said the 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Today, Wutich, is a world-renowned expert on water insecurity. And her dedication to the field has earned her the title of ASU Regents Professor for 2025, the highest faculty honor awarded at ASU.

Groundwater, though, is a finite resource: once it is drained, it cannot quickly be replaced. “The groundwater down there is very old, tens of thousands of years old,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a professor at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “If you pump it out too quickly, it’s just gone.”

“When people say, ‘Arizona is running out of water,’ my answer is, ‘We’re not running out of water. We’re running out of cheap water,’” said Rhett Larson, a water attorney and professor at Arizona State University.

“Places like Arizona and the Phoenix area are among the fastest-growing for data centers and among the most water-stressed,” said Jay Famiglietti, a professor in the school of sustainability at Arizona State University. “We’re on a collision course for maybe a major disappointment about what we can accomplish with our data centers in our physical environment."

"We are not in that dire situation we were facing then," said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy. "What we thought we needed back in 2022 was emergency funding. This year, it so far hasn’t been a very good winter" for river replenishment. "But we are not in the same situation today as we were then."

“The biggest source of depletion is agriculture. So shifting water use from agriculture to a lower water use … is a good thing for water supply,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. “But there are formulations of the ag-to urban transfer that don’t, over the long term, protect the aquifer. So it will be important to come up with a formulation that actually benefits the aquifers.”

“Variability is kind of a hallmark of the Western climate,” Sarah Porter said. “Long stretches without rain and then very, very wet years punctuated by springs of dry years is typical.”

Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, then spoke about water challenges being faced in Arizona, with an emphasis on ways citizens can make conscious choices to support water preservation.