Another contributor is that different-sized utilities also have different sampling frequencies, Paul Westerhoff, a professor of sustainable engineering and the built environment at Arizona State University, told Newsweek.

He said that, for example, there are nine compounds of haloacetic acids. While the EPA currently regulates only five of them, some utilities and states report all nine, whereas others only report the five on which the EPA has implemented regulations.

In its proposed plan of operations, the groundwater replenishment district expresses strong confidence in its ability to keep acquiring new supplies to meet its replenishment obligations, noting the wide availability of credits and the broad array of potential supplies.

Outside experts such as Ferris and Sarah Porter, the Kyl Center’s director, are more skeptical, citing the growing competition for all future supplies, including credits, their increasing costs, and the enormous number of legal and environmental uncertainties involved in bringing in new supplies.

“Lawsuits are cumbersome, and they don’t necessarily achieve the kind of sophisticated results that people would like,” Kathleen Ferris, former ADWR director and senior research fellow at the Kyl Center for Water Policy said. “But again, if you can’t get anything done any other way, then people are tempted to go to court.” 

“Hot droughts will propagate to other parts of the country and have detrimental effects on health, on infrastructure, on daily life,” said Enrique Vivoni, a hydrologist at Arizona State University and senior author on the study. As climate change continues, the authors said, more places will likely experience the dry soil conditions that spur and spread hot drought. “We need systems to alert us to hot drought just like we have systems that alert us to hurricanes.”

In rural Arizona, access to safe and affordable drinking water is not guaranteed. Households in rural communities often rely on private wells, small treatment systems or hauled water, all of which can be unreliable and expensive.

Arizona Water for All, or AW4A, a pillar of Arizona State University’s Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, is addressing water insecurity through a new project that identifies unsafe water sources and engages rural communities in sustainable water practices. 

Kathleen Ferris, a former state water director who is now a senior researcher studying water supply issues at Arizona State University, takes a particularly cynical view of the local attitude toward development — the “god of growth,” as she calls it. 

An architect of the 1980 law that, years later, would halt North Star Ranch and the hundreds of thousands of other new suburban homes, she sees the restrictions as a protection against the worst of Arizona’s past excesses. “We are not going to have growth without water,” she said. “We will have water in hand before growth is allowed.”

“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Jay Famiglietti, Director of Science for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at Arizona State University, tells Sentient of the groundwater situation in Arizona. “There’s a lot of big straws sucking out the majority of the water,” Famiglietti says. “What I didn’t have the heart to say to residents is, you just spent $100,000 on a new well but you’re probably going to have to spend another $100,000 in a few years.”

SRP installed the new flume to measure water flowing from Sycamore Creek to the Verde River above Sedona before it reaches Horseshoe Dam, miles downstream. It is also partnering with Arizona State University on a research project to study how forest thinning impacts water yield.

“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.