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The Colorado River supplies >40 million people in the United States Southwest with their daily water supply and is unable to meet the current demands. New approaches are needed to enhance sustainability and resilience. A net zero urban water (NZUW) approach meets the needs of a given community with a locally available and sustainable water supply, without detriment to interconnected systems and the long-term water supply. Transitioning to a NZUW future will require considerable modifications to governance and policy across the Southwest and its cities specifically. We identify five areas of governance and policy challenges: diversified water sources and sinks; planning, design, and operation; monitoring and enforcement; coordination; and addressing equity and justice. Four case study cities are investigated: Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, and Tucson. Across these cities, the policy priorities include supporting potable water reuse, coordinating policies across jurisdictions for alternative water sources, addressing equity and justice, developing and incentivizing water conservation plans, and making aquifer storage and recovery projects easier and more economical to pursue. We conclude that a NZUW transition in the Southwest faces considerable governance and policy challenges, but moving cities toward this goal is crucial.
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Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the US Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs
This policy brief synthesizes the findings from a three-day workshop held at University of Arizona in April 2023, focused on identifying the governance and policy challenges to a NZUW future in the Southwest US. The workshop involved water managers, non-governmental organizations, and academics from across the Southwest, and was part of a four-year National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant under the Dynamic and Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) Program. The ultimate purpose of this DISES-RCN is to define and examine the viability and value of pursuing a NZUW approach in arid and semi-arid urban scenarios of Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, and Tucson, all serviced by the Colorado River. A NZUW approach meets the needs of a given community with a locally available and sustainable water supply, without detriment to interconnected systems or long-term water supply (1). It is an integrative approach that uses progressive targets and a quantitative assessment framework to adapt to challenges created by multiple drivers of change in the urban water system. The findings detailed in this policy brief have been published in a recent ACS ES&T Water article titled “Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs” (2). This RCN is spearheaded by the University of Arizona, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, University of New Mexico, and University of California Los Angeles, in collaboration with Tucson Water, Denver Water, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The NZUW research network aims to improve the sustainability, resilience, and adaptation of urban water systems impacted by the Colorado river crisis and the recent reductions in their water allocations imposed by the Bureau of Reclamation (3).
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- Award ID(s):
- 2206132
- PAR ID:
- 10524854
- Publisher / Repository:
- Online www.netzerowater.org
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the US Southwest: Alternative Water Sources and RetrofitsResearchers and practitioners from Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, and Tucson convened virtually in November 2023 to discuss the development of NZUW model and integration of alternative water sources. The workshop was held in two sessions spanning two days, November 6th and November 17th, 2023. The first session aimed to identify the key questions that the NZUW model seeks to address and to prioritize scenarios for further investigation. It also focused on the challenges, adaptive solutions, and modeling needs for the 3 systems (natural, built and social) to be incorporated into the model. The second session delved into modeling methods used by previous studies to model urban water systems that integrate alternative water sources, to achieve objectives such as climate robustness, cost efficiency, and supply reliability (Porse et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2014; Bichai et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2020). This brief first outlines the common scenarios across the four case study cities that need to be modeled to achieve net zero water targets. It then details the challenges, adaptive solutions, and modeling needs within the natural, built, and social systems to be incorporated for model development (See Table 1). It further discusses the unique perspectives of each city and how their situations diverge from the collective findings. Finally, we present a summary of modeling approaches used by sample past studies for modeling urban water systems with alternative water sources, to offer insights for NZUW model development (See Table 2).more » « less
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This dissertation provides a foundation for understanding how water governance has changed over time, how watershed positionality and governance level shape the goals and strategies as well as the coordination of organizations actively involved in water issues, and how local, rural stakeholders changed legacy groundwater management. The first study examines the evolution of Colorado River Basin water management over the last century to understand how changing environmental conditions and path dependency have shaped past water management changes. Improved understanding can help inform policy responses to current challenges. The combined spatial, temporal, and network analyses show that Colorado River Basin water governance has been influenced by 100 years of rules that are layered and still in place. The rules have evolved water management strategies over time, shifted the emphasis of water management actions, and changed the distribution of authority across actions and rule levels. The second study explores how water management coordination varies based on governance level and physical location in the watershed. Additionally, this study analyzes how the level of governance and hydrologic position of organizations shape goals, strategies, and beliefs about the risks and benefits of changes to Colorado River Basin water management factors. The content and cluster analysis found the level of governance more influential than the hydrologic position and that coalitions can rearrange in a short period of time based on how the issue is framed. The last study unveils how local, rural residents were able to change legacy groundwater management through a process that began with a social movement to a ballot initiative to public input on groundwater management via a management goal-setting policy process in the Douglas Groundwater Basin in Arizona. The framing analysis shows that the public can identify problems and solutions, including paired solutions, but residents do not know whom to identify as being responsible for addressing water management in the basin.more » « less
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