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October 4, 2019 / Volume 7, Issue 22
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Education Coordinators from Across the U.S. Share Ideas and Knowledge
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It was extraordinary! That's what many state coordinators said about the 2019 Project WET Coordinators Conference and Training held in Tucson last week. We can thank the APW team who made it happen.
A regional greeting featuring an excerpt from Regents' Professor Ofelia Zepeda's Prophecy poem kicked off the conference. APW offered a behind-the-scenes look at our Arizona Water Festival model, which now delivers 28 festivals per year. We dove into STEM instruction with underwater robots, offering others a chance to partner with Marine Advanced Technology Education as APW has done in Arizona. To help coordinators adhere to the Next Generation Science Standards, we used extreme weather phenomena to demonstrate meaningful, student-centered instruction.
Read the entire news article here.
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WRRC Brown Bag -
An Update on the Santa Cruz River Heritage Project
October 8, 2019
Speakers:
Maya Teyechea, Project Hydrologist and
Dick Thompson, Lead Recharge Hydrologist,
Tucson Water
Time/Location: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m., WRRC Sol Resnick Conference Rm., 350 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson.
The Santa Cruz River Heritage Project recharges reclaimed water and establishes a riparian area in downtown Tucson. This presentation will present how Tucson Water planned, permitted, and executed the project and its current operation. The presentation includes observations made so far, as well as some future expectations.
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WRRC Brown Bag -
Lesson Learned from the 2018 E. coli Outbreak Investigation and the Future of Food Safety
October 16, 2019
Speakers:
Channah Rock, Professor and Water Quality Specialist, Department Environmental Science, University of Arizona
Time/Location: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m., WRRC Sol Resnick Conference Rm., 350 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson.
The University of Arizona is researching the Spring 2018 E. coli contamination of Yuma-grown romaine lettuce to help determine environmental influences on bacterial persistence and distribution in the Yuma agricultural region. The goal of the work, which is being conducted in partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, state agriculture officials, and local growers, is to improve growing and harvesting practices, to reduce contamination risks, and ultimately to enhance produce safety. This lecture will help explain the methods, lessons learned, and initial outcomes of this landmark multi-year investigation.
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Upcoming Brown Bags
- October 23, Itzchak E. Kornfeld, Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "You've Got it All Wrong About Water"
- October 28, Eran Feitelson, Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Will Desalination Resolve the Israeli-Arab Water Conflicts? And if not, why?" (Special Time/Location)
- November 8, Haley Paul, Policy Manager, Audubon Arizona, "The Economic Impact of Arizona's Rivers, Lakes, and Streams"
- November 19, Betsy Wilkening, Ladd Keith, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, UA/APW, and CAPLA, "Heat Mapping"
- December 4, Laura Condon, Assistant Professor, UA/HAS, "Effects of Groundwater Pumping"
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Arizona Runs on Water - Water 101
October 17, 2019
Time/Location: 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m., Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, 4341 E. Broadway Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85040 (Palo Verde Room)
- Where does your water come from and how is it used?
- How is it managed?
- What about agriculture and landscaping - what is their water story?
Learn about and discuss these issues at the Arizona Runs on Water Cooperative Extension Education Series.
Water 101 is the first in the series, which also includes separate evening sessions on Water for Agriculture and Water for Turf/Landscape. Light refreshments will be served and youth education activities with Arizona Project WET will be available in the adjacent room (6 or older, please.) Seating is limited; reserve your spot today.
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HAS-LAW Colloquium Series - Special Master, General Stream Adjudication
October 17, 2019
Speaker: Susan Ward Harris, Special Master for the Gila River and Little Colorado River General Stream Adjudications in Arizona
Time/Location: 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., Haury Lector Hall, Rm. S107, ENR2, 1064 E. Lowell St., Tucson.
This discussion will focus on the intersection of the legal system and science in the development of water law, as well as on the actions that lawyers and scientific experts can take to meet legal thresholds for admissible scientific evidence and more effectively present scientific research in the courtroom.
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 Santa Cruz River Renaissance Continues
The future of Tucson's Santa Cruz River looks bright, as two efforts to revive flow foretell. In the south, water is flowing on the Tohono O'odham Nation's San Xavier District and riparian vegetation is growing in response. For the past year, new streams lined with emerging trees and grasses have formed in the riverbed. A recent article by Tony Davis in the Arizona Daily Star even suggests that the mesquite bosque that once covered seven square miles of the river's floodplain may return. Because the Tohono O'odham's use of its water entitlements, cessation of local pumping by Tucson Water, and other factors, groundwater now supports year-round flow. Further downstream, Tucson Water's Santa Cruz Heritage Project has been releasing reclaimed water onto the river bed for several months and already new life can be found there. The checkered garter snake pictured above is an exciting example. The WRRC Brown Bag seminar next Tuesday, October 8th, will provide an update on the Heritage Project and its river revival.
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Upcoming WRRC Brown Bag Speaker - In the News
University of Arizona research on the recent E. coli contamination of Yuma-grown romaine lettuce is making the news! Both Phoenix area Channel 12 News and KNAU Arizona Public Radio featured stories about the work, which is being done in partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, state agriculture officials, and local growers. UA professor and extension specialist, Dr. Channah Rock, is leading the multi-year study and she will be presenting an overview of the methods, lessons learned, and initial outcomes at the October 16, 2019 WRRC Brown Bag seminar. Findings from the study will help us determine environmental influences on bacterial persistence and distribution in the Yuma agricultural region. The goal is to improve growing and harvesting practices and to prevent or mitigate contamination risks, and ultimately enhance produce safety.
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Project Harvest Completes Second Year of Citizen Science Rainwater Harvesting
As the 2019 monsoon came to an end on September 30, the University of Arizona's Project Harvest marked the end of a second successful year of working with citizens throughout Arizona to train them in rainwater harvesting, water analysis, and interpretation of data. This NSF-funded project, led by Dr. Monica Ramirez-Andreotta, engages students and faculty from several departments at the University of Arizona, as well as community health workers and volunteers in Tucson, Dewey-Humboldt, Globe/Miami, and Hayden-Winkelman. To date, nearly 2,000 rainwater samples have been collected and analyzed to generate a dataset that will inform rainwater harvesting guidelines for safe and sustainable food production.
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New Links Added to WRRC News Article on Arizona Forward Event
Water was the theme at the Arizona Forward's Annual Environmental Excellence Awards gala held last month in Phoenix. The University of Arizona and several other entities were honored during the evening, but the one highlight of the event was a video celebrating Arizona Forward's 50
th anniversary.
The video features many of Arizona's leaders, including WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal. You can find links to the video, as well as to an AZ Big Media article, on our WRRC news story
here.
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Where are they now? Andrew Schwarz
Andrew Schwarz received his MS in Environmental Planning from the University of Arizona in 2007. From 2005-2007 Andrew was a Graduate Research Assistant at the WRRC for Director Sharon B. Megdal, where he helped create the Conserve2Enhance™ concept and author two WRRC reports that focused on the restoration of Arizona's riparian areas. Now based in Northern California, Andrew Schwarz is a supervising engineer for the Delta Stewardship Council, a state agency charged with achieving a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta ecosystem. Mr. Schwarz supervises an interdisciplinary team that manages implementation and policy development for the Delta Plan. With over 15 years of water resource management and engineering experience, Mr. Schwarz has worked on multiple state-level water resource planning projects and has also worked to support local water agency climate resiliency planning. Keep up the great work, Andrew!
To revisit Andrew's past work at the WRRC, click the links below.
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