In total, the federal government, Mexico, seven states and 29 sovereign tribes are involved in negotiating how to operate the Colorado River system, Sarah Porter explained.

“My work really is dedicated to understanding some of the darkest parts of the human experience,” Amber Wutich said. “More recently, I have started to go back in history and look at how humans have faced moments of extreme climate distress. There is suffering, yes. There is death. But it’s also true that humans have historically faced these challenges with enormous innovation and transformations in our society. I’m hopeful that if we really do invest in social infrastructure, which is what gives rise to human innovation and ingenuity, great things could happen for humanity.”

Paul Westerhoff, Regents Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at ASU, the Fulton Chair of Environmental Engineering and director of Global Center for Water Technology, moderated the event. He said that while atmospheric water harvesting technology has gathered interest from industries like health care, home appliances, semiconductor manufacturing, the military and data centers, it is an underutilized area for progress.

What have we learned from millennia of water insecurity, of climate changes and disasters, of building along freshwater ways and the ocean, that we can apply today? Learn more from Dr. Amber Wutich.

The Kyl Center examined the growth in the Valley regarding groundwater use and the consequences that come with it. The report is said to provide communities with solutions to become “water resilient.”

Farms and ranches will have to make painful cuts to their water use, according to Sarah Porter with the Kyl Center for Water Policy. “You’re talking about farmers not being able to grow as much, potentially really impacting rural economies,” she said.

Wutich said water scarcity disproportionately impacts poorer communities and asked the audience if they knew the saying, “Water runs uphill toward money.” She said water-insecure communities have less capacity to solve problems with sophisticated engineering and are more likely to rely on social infrastructure, such as borrowing water from a neighbor or buying unregulated water from vendors selling from a truck or pushcart.

“In the Phoenix area, and Tucson, there is a great capacity for the older cities to grow, mostly upward, because they have fairly robust water supplies,” Sarah Porter said. But even those jurisdictions are seeking new — or new-used — water sources.

"The drought situation across the western U.S. has improved considerably as a result of a very wet winter," Jay Famiglietti said. In fact, both California and Nevada are "essentially drought-free" at the moment, which is "really unusual."

Southwestern cities have an exceptionally simple solution for curbing residential water use: Charge more for it in the summers. After Phoenix started using this powerful incentive, the number of homes with front or back lawns went down from nearly 80% in the 1970s to about 10% today, according to Kathryn Sorensen.