"Beyond water, chip fabrication requires geologically stable ground, low humidity and a positive business climate for manufacturers and the families they employ. Even without Arizona’s approach to water usage, the dry climate is ideal," says Paul Westerhoff.

"Many people in Arizona believe, even though it's incorrect, that the water under their land is their property. That's never been the law in Arizona, and we have an Arizona Supreme Court opinion that says it is not your property," says Sarah Porter. "But regardless of what our Supreme Court said at some point, it feels to people, to some people, that we're tinkering with a property right."

“I’ve been screaming into the wind about this for 15, 20 years now,” said Jay Famiglietti. “We don’t know how much groundwater we have, which seems ridiculous. And the reason we don’t know is because it costs money [to find out].” 

“We’re trying to help CAP anticipate what the Colorado River will look like in the future, 20 years from now and 100 years from now, because water agencies need to start adapting management to a new reality and communicating this to those sectors in Arizona that depend on its water supply,” Enrique Vivoni says. “This includes farmers, cities and tribes, so it affects the entire state’s economic activity.”

The Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at ASU — aimed at providing immediate, actionable and evidence-based solutions to strengthen Arizona’s water security — has already seen great success in patenting technologies, empowering communities and better understanding our state’s water challenges. Additionally, the newly launched Water Institute draws from existing academic capacity across ASU, led by the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory to develop educational, research and communication projects that benefit communities across the world.

In September 2023, the consortium, the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy and the Arizona State University’s Water Innovation Initiative, brought about 40 people from the Willcox and Douglas basins for an intensive two-day workshop of "exploratory scenario planning," a tool that assumes many possible futures and that plans for uncertainty.

The United States has no plan for the disruptions that will befall our food systems as critical water supplies dwindle, causing the price of some foods to skyrocket and bringing us closer to the time when we may have to consider pipelines to replenish or replace depleted groundwater, writes Jay Famiglietti.

The three TSMC factories are projected to create 6,000 permanent jobs and anchor a new economic corridor in northern Phoenix, generating significant property and sales tax as well as rate revenue for utilities. Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said the economic boost will make it easier for the city to develop the water purification plant, which she called “a major project that will enable the city to, in the end, have much more flexibility with respect to the Colorado River.”

Several researchers are investigating ways to reduce and recycle water in chip manufacturing. For example, Paul Westerhoff, a sustainable engineering professor at Arizona State University, works with research teams to show chip manufacturers how to purify wastewater from processing chips and use it to wash the next chip.

Dave White, the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at ASU, said the White House council’s activities are very narrow. “It’s not legislation,” he said, explaining that PCAST is “intentionally getting a more complicated part of the [groundwater] story” that will better inform their final recommendations to the president.