“It’s like this sort of creeping disaster that has taken over the continents in ways that no one was really anticipating,” Arizona State professor Jay Famiglietti, a co-author of the study, said.

How do you prevent biofilms — large communities of bacteria like the slime on your teeth before you brush — from growing in water systems in space and on Earth?

A multi-university research team led by Arizona State University Regents Professor Paul Westerhoff is investigating ultraviolet light as a cost-effective, safer alternative to disinfecting chemicals to prevent biofilm growth on surfaces, reducing health risks and equipment damage.

A number of Arizona cities have adopted rules restricting water deliveries to users who use a lot of water. A new study looks at the kinds of rules cities have imposed, and it found that cities have, by and large, taken different approaches.

Sarah Porter is director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. She joined The Show to talk more about what the research shows.

"When someone is talking about water use by industry and they're using gallons, they're doing this to scare people or shake people up," Sarah Porter said. "And that may be a good thing to do or it may not be, but it's not the way experts think about water. We think about it in terms of acre-feet."

“Fundamentally, one of the biggest sources of disagreement between the upper and lower basin is the difference of view about whether the upper basin has any obligation for how much the lower basin gets,” Porter said.

Kathryn Sorensen, report author and research director at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, said the report is a sign that water managers could be in for some tough choices.

While she agreed with her colleagues that striking a balance for immediate cuts to water use is a difficult task, Sorensen said agricultural users must be a part of the solution to see any significant progress.

Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said that while Cooke’s withdrawal is a lost opportunity to have a highly qualified person in the job, it’s not likely to disrupt ongoing negotiations. She said the bureau’s acting leadership has been working assiduously to figure out a way forward for river management.

Backed by $15 million in funding, organizations across sectors are developing technologies that address environmental pressures, leaving more room for economic growth, according to Paul Westerhoff, a faculty member at Arizona State University who leads a project working group.

Cut Colorado River water use now, water researchers and other experts urge in a new report, to avoid putting the river system in a very difficult to potentially catastrophic position in a year. The report’s other authors are John Fleck, an author and writer in residence for the University of New Mexico’s Utton Transboundary Resources Center, researcher Kathryn Sorensen of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy and Katherine Tara, an attorney for UNM’s Utton Center.

“Let’s hope that we are all wrong and that it snows like hell all winter and runoff is wonderful and we buy ourselves some time and additional buffer,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research for Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy and one of the report’s co-authors. “But of course, it never makes sense to plan as if it’s going to snow, and we have to deal with what is a realistic but not worst-case scenario and take responsible actions.”