Water means life to all of us desert dwellers. This precious natural resource is essential to our impressive diversity of plants and to our wildlife. And for thousands of years, generation after generation of people have settled where they could find water.

About 7.3 million people call Arizona home. And where you live in the state usually determines what water sources you use at home, at school and when you’re out having fun splashing around!

Water: the West’s Most Precious Natural Resource

Just think of all the ways people use water—for drinking, bathing, washing our clothes and dishes, keeping our yards green, swimming, fishing, growing crops, ranching, dairy, mining and manufacturing.

“Natural resources include everything that the earth provides that is not manufactured or made by humans. So natural resources include many things, and water is one of the most important, but it also includes things like minerals, natural gas and animals,” explains Susana Eden, research and outreach program officer for the Water Resources Research Center for the state.

Overall, Arizonans get their water from pumping groundwater (41%), the Colorado River (36%), other rivers in our state (18%) and reclaimed water (5%), which is cleaned or treated wastewater that can be used for watering the grass at your school, to keep golf courses green or for recharging (replenishing) groundwater.

Western States Share Water from the Colorado River   

While Arizona RELIES on water from the Colorado River, so do six other Western states and Northern Mexico!

The Upper Basin states of the Colorado River are Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Arizona, California and Nevada make up the Lower Basin states (plus part of Mexico).

Huge dams took years to build along the Colorado—the Hoover Dam created Lake Mead starting in 1936, and the Glen Canyon Dam formed Lake Powell beginning in 1963. These are the two largest reservoirs in the United States and enable the river to be managed better between the states.

Each state is allotted a certain portion of Colorado River water each year, according to a deal agreed upon in 1922.

But a lot has changed in that time. Arizona’s largest cities of Phoenix and Tucson have grown rapidly as have their water needs. To help, the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile modern aqueduct which took decades to build, started delivering Colorado River water in 1985 to the state’s most populated areas, farms and nearby tribes.

Long-term Drought in West = Trouble

To make matters worse, Western states continue to be in a long-term DROUGHT. A drought is a time of water shortage, when a lack of rain and/or snow creates dry conditions that make life harder for the people, plants and animals.

In Arizona, we’ve been in a drought for decades! And without enough snowmelt and rainwater runoff flowing into the Colorado, the reservoirs we use have been falling to alarmingly low levels.

“The Colorado River drought has been going on for more than 20 years,” Eden explains. “Although it’s been a wet year, the water levels at the dam have not rebounded to pre-drought levels…so we have water shortage rules.”

The federal government declared a water shortage, which forced Arizona and Nevada to reduce their share of the Colorado River. Arizona, Nevada and California were asked to come up with a new agreement that would keep more water in the river.

“There’s been more water taken out of the river than actually put back in by nature, so the water (in the reservoirs for use) has dropped,” explains Pam Justice, a long-time education coordinator with Arizona Project WET (Water Education for Teachers). “And so all the states are trying to work out an agreement together. We have to move forward remembering that we’re in a drought…we all have to work together at using less water.”

Getting More Water!

With no indication that the drought’s about to end, using less water from the Colorado might be ongoing. Already, CAP has cut how much water it delivers to Phoenix and Tucson and to its other customers. In addition, the Lower Basin states recently agreed to reduce what they take from the Colorado River. The big question is where can we get the water we need? Getting the most out of the water that we use is a good solution, Eden says. With only 5% of our water being reclaimed, we can certainly find ways of using it more.

“Some water goes to wastewater treatment plants and gets treated to a high quality and then gets reused,” she says. “It was just discarded for years and years, but people began to see the real value of using it again and again.”

A new source of water here in the West might come from the ocean! “One of the big ideas that’s being talked about seriously now is desalinating seawater,” Eden points out. While Arizona doesn’t have an ocean, California and Mexico do.

“There’s a proposal to build a desalination plant in Mexico, and either build a pipeline or work out an arrangement with other Colorado River water users to exchange (part of their allotted) water,” she continues. To make drinking water from the ocean, the salt and other impurities are filtered out.

Saving Water Is Up to ALL of Us!

Phoenix gets much of its water from the Colorado and from the Salt and Verde rivers that flow within the state. For a few decades, Tucson has been using CAP water for recharge, refilling natural groundwater storage areas and pumping out some of this mixed water.

Eden notes that not everyone in Arizona has access to a reliable source of water. “There are people who depend on individual domestic wells whose wells may be going dry,” she points out. “And there are people who have water hauled into their homes from trucks. There are people on Native American (lands) who don’t have infrastructure to bring water into their homes.”

“It’s important to know where your water comes from and then to think about water as not that infinite thing that will always flow when you turn on your tap...think about using as little as possible,” Eden emphasizes.

Conserving is up to all of us. So turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth. With your parent, check for leaky faucets or toilets that keep running. If your parent owns your home and the dishwasher, washing machine or toilet are old, maybe they can get newer ones that are more water smart. Swimming pools here use tons of water. So maybe enjoy the neighborhood pool instead of having one put in your backyard. And if you do have a pool, have your parent look into ways to keep the evaporation to a minimum by using pool covers or additives. And water smart landscaping, including the right desert plants in the right places around a home, plus harvesting rainwater can save lots of water.

Kids Are Our Water Future!

While there’s no easy solution to the challenges we face when it comes to water, Arizona Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) is here to help! For over 30 years, this arm of Arizona Cooperative Extension has made learning about water exciting for tens of thousands of students in the state each year!

There’s so much to learn when it comes to wise water use here in the desert. “There are a lot of different water users across Arizona. Agriculture (farming) is the largest user of water, then people in our metropolitan areas for residential, commercial and industrial are also major users. Then our animals and plants since all living things are dependent on water,” says Pam Justice, a Project WET senior education coordinator who has been with the Maricopa County Education program for 21 years.

AZ Project WET’s main job is to educate students, teachers and the community. Coordinators STRIVE to develop leaders who understand water in our state; help teachers with water knowledge and teaching practices, and connect them with people who care for our water.

The most spectacular Project WET event is the Water Festival for fourth-graders. Volunteers from local water providers and the community organize fun, hands-on learning festivals all over Arizona as a celebration and reward for the fourth-graders’ classroom learning.

“The water festival is one of our oldest programs, and it’s actually a learning unit,” Justice explains. “(Teachers) come to a training…where we model the activities that they’re actually going to be doing with their students in the classroom before the Water Festival.”

Festival learning stations can handle up to 16 classes of kids at a time! There are four stations at a Water Festival—groundwater, watershed, water cycle and water conservation technology. In a two-day festival, there may be as many as 64 classes!

The program meets the state science standards for fourth grade. Students come up with an evidence-based argument about water availability in their area and its impact on their lives. “It’s always been important for us to teach our future water stewards about water because we live in the desert,” Justice points out.

There’s still time to enroll in the Phoenix and Tucson-area Water Festivals! Arizona Project WET has a lot more to offer, too, with presentations and programs all the way up through high school. Go to projectwet.arizona.edu for more information.