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.

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.