Mariana Dale

The Republic | azcentral.com

Water scarcity is one of Arizona's most serious, ever-present problems.

Which is why students, researchers, professionals and creative thinkers are ­being challenged to raise awareness for an issue that the experts believe needs to be addressed now.

A $100,000 prize awaits the group that comes up with the most innovative ­campaign to push water scarcity into the forefront of public ­conversation.

The Water Consciousness Challenge is the first phase of the New Arizona Prize offered by the Arizona Community Foundation in collaboration with The Arizona Republic and the Morrison Institute for Public Policy. Underwriting for the program comes from the Tashman Fund and the Lodestar Foundation.

The next phase of the competition will challenge entrepreneurs to create business-based solutions and products to reduce water use.

"The Valley has enjoyed water affluence for a long time because we had really great planning," said Megan Brownell, chief business development and brand officer at the Arizona Community Foundation, a Phoenix-based philanthropic organization. "It's now time to act so there won't be a conflict in 20 to 30 years."

The competition wants to create a public-service campaign that raises awareness about the challenges facing Arizona's long-term water supply so residents will feel an urgency to start working on them now.

If Arizonans don't change how they consume water and start brainstorming new solutions for dwindling supplies, shortages won't be a choice, they will be an unavoidable reality. Planning for the future of water now will help ensure there is enough water for future generations, Brownell said.

The message isn't new; it has been taught with puppets, posters, television spots, brochures and landscape-design classes for years.

But experts, researchers and industry workers agree that as long as taps gush clear,drinkable water, it's hard to keep water scarcity part of public conversation.

"One challenge is getting people to take ownership of their decisions and how they contribute to the demand side of the equation," said Dave White, co-director of Arizona State University's Decision Center for a Desert City, which studies water use and sustainability.

Arizona won't run out of water this yearor next.But dropping reservoir levels, continuing drought in the Southwest and the depletion of non-renewable groundwater will require the state to change how it ensures a supply of waterfor the future.

Residents recognize drought as a contributor to water scarcity but are less willing to acknowledge their own use as a significant influence, according to an ASU study in 2009.

In part, that's because municipal water users have been able to count on a reliable water supply for more than 100 years.

"In some ways, as you might hear, we are a victim of our own success," said White, one of the study's authors. "Our water-resource management and institutions that govern our water have provided a very robust and generally resilient system."

The water Arizonans use flows from rivers like the Salt and Verde, is channeled from the Colorado River through the Central Arizona Project and is pumped from aquifers. Surface water sources like the streams are labeled renewable because rain falls and snow melts, refilling the rivers and reservoirs.

But Arizona has measured lower-than-average rainfall for the majority of the last 15 years; critical reservoirs such as Lake Mead are at record lows.

Lake Mead is only 39 percent full, and its water level is the lowest since 1937, when the lake was still filling after Hoover Dam's completion. If levels continue to drop, it would trigger reductions in how much water Arizona receives from the reservoir.

The state's other main source of water, which fills nearly 40 percent of demand, is pulled from underground aquifers. Once extracted, it can't be recharged easily.

"It's not a big bathtub under thecentral Arizona region," ASU's White said. "Not every area of the Valley has equal access to groundwater resources."

Researchers have found that climate change is likely to have implications for future drought. As the Southwest becomes more arid, there is a higher risk for severe drought, researchers found.

A recent study of Southwest climate models by Cornell University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona found the risk for mega-drought — one that lasts multiple decades — in the Southwest is 80 percent in the next century, greater than previously expected.

"It doesn't happen or unfold as quickly as a tornado or a hurricane, but it's a source of risk and hazard that is out there," said Toby Ault, one of the study's authors and an assistant professor in Cornell's department of earth and atmospheric sciences.

Long-range strategies have ensured that a future water shortage in Arizona will be delayed, even in a prolonged drought, by saving water below ground.

In all, there's nearly 4 million acre-feet of water banked underground throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area. That's enough to sustain most of the Valley's water needs for four years if no other water supply were available, but it's unlikely the situation would ever beso dire, said Christa McJunkin, a Salt River Project water-strategy analyst.

"It's all stored, waiting for that not-so-rainy day," McJunkin said.

One-acre foot is 325,851 gallons of water, about enough to flood a football field without end zones to a depth of one foot.McJunkin estimates it would serve two to threeArizona families a year.

The Salt River bed's expanse of dry sand and scrubby plants obscures the second-largest artificially recharged aquifer in Arizona.

About 700,000 acre-feet of water is stored in the SRP's Granite Reef Underground Storage Project. Water from the Central Arizona Project, the Salt and Verde rivers and a Mesa wastewater-treatment facility is channeled to basins in the riverbed. From there, water soaks into the ground and replenishes the aquifer.

"The best way to think of it is if you had a cup of sand and poured water into it," McJunkin said. "The water fills up the pore space in between."

Other agencies, such as the Arizona Water Banking Authority, also buy and bank water for future use.

The groundwater reserves are similar to the state's rainy-day monetary fund, but once those aquifers are depleted, it takes years to replenish them.

Arizona can't depend on groundwater forever, White said.

"The solutions of the last 100 years are not the solutions of the next 100 years."

Even those who have built their career studying water, like Arizona Municipal Water Users Association Executive Director Kathleen Ferris, understand how people tire of hearing about a distant water crisis.

"In water, you don't plan for the future by saying, 'OK we've got to do this tomorrow,' " Ferris said. "You plan for the future by saying, 'OK, in 20 years, you've got to have done x, y and z'. ... It's hard to keep people's interest in that period of time."

Possible solutions to meeting Arizona's future water needs include:

• Desalination of sea water, which requires large financial investment and collaboration between government agencies and possibly Mexico.

• Rebates for water-efficient systems. Tucson offers up to $1,000 for households that install gray-water recycling systems to reuse water from sinks, showers and washing machinesfor irrigation.

• Increasing the use of recycled or reclaimed water. Arizona already uses this water to irrigate landscaping and recharge aquifers, but not as drinking water.

• Cloud seeding. The Central Arizona Project has spent nearly $800,000 to blast silver iodide into clouds to try to increase snowfall in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, where the snowpack feeds the Colorado River.

Studies suggest part of the problem is that environmental issues don't inspire emotional reactions like fear and worry, which tend to spur people to change their actions. Marketing executive Park Howell hasfound this to be true as a general rule.

"You have to make it personal," Howell said. "You have to make it immediate to get urgency to change behavior. What about water is personal and immediate?"

His agency, Park&Co, helped create the campaign "Water — Use it Wisely," which has been spreading water awareness since 1999. One of the most identifiable facets of the campaign is its suggestions of "water-saving devices." Like a push broom — instead of a water-costly hose — for cleaning a driveway.

What started as a campaign in a few Arizona municipalities spread to more than 400 groups, Howell said. The message has appeared on everything from home-improvement products to airport signs and water bills. Still, water conservation is not a silver-bullet solution. Alone, it will not guarantee a secure water future for Arizona.

"It's really important not to get too fixated, I think, on (the idea) one sector's water use can solve our imbalances," Ferris said. "Conservation is just a small part of the overall strategy."