IN THIS ISSUE: WRRC Screening and Panel, Brown Bag Recap, USDA, APW, PBS NewsHour, NSF Grant
Emerging Water Leaders Discuss
the World’s Water Crisis
The WRRC is celebrating “Imagine a Day Without Water” on Thursday, October 21, with a special webinar featuring a 19-minute video on global water issues followed by a panel of emerging leaders in water and environmental management and policy. As part of a Netflix educational series, the video, EXPLAINED: The World’s Water Crisis, takes in the consequences of pollution, over-consumption, drought, and climate change on existing freshwater resources and some approaches to averting the coming crisis. It focuses attention on the value of water as essential and irreplaceable. The panel discussion will include reactions to the film and personal stories about living without easy access to water, as well as comments on how to create just and equitable solutions. The WRRC is fortunate this semester to be assisted by talented and committed staff and students. At the beginning of their careers, the individuals on this panel will provide fresh perspectives on water challenges, some that have been building up for generations.

EVENTS
Water Solutions for Our Warmer World
Episode 5 – Water and Infrastructure: Building for the Future
 
Date: Wednesday, Oct 20, 2021
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 pm PT
Location: Webinar Only
 
Join the Arizona Institutes for Resilience for the fifth episode of the Water Solutions for Our Warmer World series, Water and Infrastructure: Building for the Future, co-hosted by the UArizona Udall Center and WRRC! The public webinar will run from 4 to 5:30 pm PT on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 and will address:
  • how conversations about infrastructure in DC can affect social and environmental justice 
  • what role architects and engineers play in building resilient infrastructure 
  • how green infrastructure contributes to resilient water supply solutions  
  • the latest innovations in community design that can be scaled up for broader application
Cathleen Kelly, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, will give the keynote address. Panelists include:
  • Dr. Bilal Ayyub, Professor and Director, Center for Technology and Systems Management, University of Maryland
  • David Herd, Managing Partner, Buro Happold California
  • Dr. Adriana Zuniga-Teran, Assistant Research Scientist, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy & School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, UArizona
The event will be moderated by Courtney Crosson, Licensed Architect and Assistant Professor of Architecture, UArizona.
 
Image: East Verde River, Cindy Rettinger, WRRC 2020 Photo Contest

 
Date: Tuesday, Oct 26, 2021
Time: 12:00 - 1:15 pm MST
Location: Webinar Only
 
Speaker:
Richard N. Morrison, Retired Attorney; Co-Founder of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy
 
Quite often events described as “Black Swans” are really not quite that. They are more like grey swans—almost black, but not quite. In other words, there are some hugely important events in life that are disproportionate in their effects but not entirely foreseeable.

There are at least three water-related examples that come to mind; events in Arizona that were almost Black Swan events, and the moral to the story in each case seems to be that we can always do a better job of planning and should try to do so.

In this presentation, Richard Morrison will discuss an example from Pinal County in some detail.
Upcoming WRRC Events

Sarah E. Abney, Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Environmental Science, W.E.S.T. Center
Ammon F. Cadogan, Water Resources Engineer, Craftwater Engineering


Betsy Wilkening, President, Polar Educators
Kristen Poppleton, Senior Director of Programs, Climate Generation

Diego Berger, PhD, Coordinator of International Projects, Mekorot
NEWS
APS Participates in WRRC Brown Bag
 
On Thursday, October 7, the WRRC hosted Henry Day, water policy and strategy consultant at the Arizona Public Service Company (APS), for a Brown Bag Webinar. In his presentation titled “APS Sustainable Water Strategies and Practices,” Day outlined how the utility is conserving water while transitioning to meet the goal of providing 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050. The presentation began with an overview of APS as Arizona’s largest electric utility and described the importance of sustainable water practices at APS and in Arizona. Within the context of drought and the Colorado River shortage declaration, Day discussed APS’ historical and continued focus on water conservation. He described the Palo Verde generation station as the world’s only nuclear powerplant that is 100% reliant on treated effluent for cooling, and detailed the utility’s efforts to reduce the use of non-renewable groundwater. The presentation ended with a summary of the projected impacts of the APS Clean Energy Commitment on water consumption. Day then engaged in a moderated discussion, answering many excellent audience questions.

Image: APS Service Territory and Power Plants, Arizona Public Service Company
 
Major AFRI Grant Funds Multi-University
Groundwater Project

The US Department of Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) has been awarded a $10 million grant for a multi-university project led by researchers from the University of California-Davis. WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal joins co-investigators from UC Davis, California State University-Fresno, and New Mexico State University in an interdisciplinary project aimed at alleviating groundwater overdraft and sustaining irrigated agriculture in the Southwest. The project focuses on major aquifer systems in California, Arizona, and New Mexico: Central Valley aquifer, Central Arizona alluvial aquifer, and Lower Rio Grande basin. In these areas, climate change induced multi-year droughts and heat stress have led to unprecedented overdraft, as growers increasingly depend on groundwater. Research products include integrated modeling, management strategies and processes, and decision support and groundwater governance tools designed to help southwestern agriculture adapt to climate change. The project also includes the development of innovative educational and extension programming to move research into action. UArizona is also collaborating on another AFRI-funded project expanding research on how crops grow under solar panels. UArizona Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment Greg Barron-Gafford is the physical science lead on the project. AFRI funded 15 projects with an investment of more than $146 million.

Innovations in Water Education

APW has been at the forefront of water education for decades, yet every now and then, they try to mix things up. As a result, they’ve created several exciting new offerings and have more planned. APW’s ever-popular groundwater series has taken on an expanded new approach. Reframed as Groundwater Education and Conservation series, these three new classes focus on saving tangible groundwater in the West Valley while diving deeper into groundwater concepts. The first class introduces the groundwater system using new student models, while the second class uses the models to observe overdraft, explore safe-yield, and focus on community-specific impacts of excessive groundwater withdrawal. The third class features a water audit to empower students to take action to save water in their communities. Another new series is called the Agricultural Waters Program. These two classes examine the importance of water in agriculture. In the Water and Your Food class, students take on the role of a family farmer who needs to determine the most cost-effective watering system for their farm. The second lesson is Modeling Water Efficiency for Farms. In this class, students build models of four different irrigation systems and compare their efficiency, ultimately determining which one might be best for their crops.

Image: Groundwater Well in a Farm Field, Jennifer Weber
PBS NewsHour Features UArizona’s
COVID Response

On Tuesday, October 5, PBS NewsHour aired a segment on how colleges and universities are dealing with the return of students to campus. The University of Arizona was one of two universities featured. In addition to interviewing UArizona President Robert Robbins about ensuring health and safety while adhering to Arizona’s prohibition of vaccine and mask mandates, PBS correspondent, Hari Sreenivasan, spoke with UArizona Professor Ian Pepper. Dr. Pepper, director of the Water & Energy Sustainable Technology Center, is leading an effort to identify COVID cases by testing the wastewater coming from individual student dormitories. The wastewater testing can identify COVID-positive students while they are still asymptomatic and less contagious, and allow them to be moved to an isolation dorm, which is most effective in containing the spread. This strategy has been used to help combat disease transmission since students started coming back to campus and can be credited with reducing the number of COVID cases at the university.

Image: PBS NewsHour
UArizona Team Funded to Model Water Resources Using Machine Learning
 
As extreme weather events, drought, and wildfire impact water systems throughout the US, researchers are working to put the best hydrologic science in the hands of natural resource managers and policymakers to improve decision-making. In September, UArizona Assistant Professor of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, Laura Condon, and her team were awarded $5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their project HydroGEN, which stands for Hydrologic Scenario Generation. HydroGEN will provide new hydrologic data combining abstract machine learning and modeling with real problems that can be used to predict future conditions, such as stream flow, soil moisture, and groundwater on seasonal to annual time scales. The project is part of the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator program supporting interdisciplinary efforts to solve real-world problems. Collaborators on the project include Princeton University’s Reed Maxwell, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Peter Melchior, assistant professor of astrophysical sciences; Nirav Merchant, director of the UArizona Data Science Institute; and Santa Barbara-based company, ViQi, which provides web-based interactive visualizations.
 
Image: Willow Creek Entering the Taylor Reservoir in Colorado, Drew Bennet
 
WATER JOBS

Please visit WRRC's website for a complete listing of water jobs & opportunities.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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