Faith Kearns, a wildfire and water expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, said understanding the impacts of wildfires on water systems is a relatively new area of study, particularly when it comes to urban areas like Los Angeles. Kearns co-authored a 2021 brief on this intersection, focusing on California and inspired by incidents like the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which burned into the city of Santa Rosa.

The "forever chemicals" flowing from U.S. wastewater treatment plants are not only more abundant than previously thought, but also largely consist of pharmaceuticals that have received little scientific or regulatory attention, a new multi-university study reveals. 

“The technology is very well-established,” says Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

"Arizona has experienced an influx of industrial-scale agriculture, which winds up hastening the depletion of the aquifers," says Sarah Porter. "Those companies, which have been somewhat vilified, came in and did something perfectly lawful."

The seminal report is “a beacon for the future of groundwater management,” said Jay Famiglietti, a water scientist and global futures professor at Arizona State University. “Its recommendations are comprehensive and forward looking, and if implemented over time, can be a game-changer for groundwater sustainability in the United States.”

“I don’t think we should be looking for any break in the severity of what we’re experiencing,” Jay Famiglietti, a professor and climate researcher at Arizona State University, told Courthouse News. “It’s only gonna continue and it’s only gonna get worse.”

Negotiators from the seven states that use the water from the Colorado River for cities and farms across the Western U.S. are running out of time to reach a deal to share the water in times of drought. Get an update on the stalled negotiations from Kathryn Sorenson. She’s director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University who has come to AGU meetings since 1989, attended this year’s event to reveal terrifying findings about the loss of available freshwater around the world, due to the climate crisis and agricultural practices. “People like me who are experts need to step up and say, ‘I think this should be done,’” said Famiglietti.

“This lawsuit reflects, more than anything, that there has been a kind of shifting perspective on groundwater, from a resource to be extracted and put to beneficial use to a resource that needs to be protected and only to be used for certain purposes,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University who also serves on the governor’s water policy council. 

“Protection of Arizona’s precious groundwater is certainly important, but this lawsuit could open a can of worms,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “Nearly every farm, city, mine, tribe, and power company in the state relies on groundwater.” Kathleen Ferris, an attorney and Arizona water policy expert who directed the study that led to the current law overseeing the state’s groundwater management, said rural groundwater use in the state “is “governed by the rule of reasonable use.”