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Water planning and governance strategies must adapt to challenges associated with population growth, climate change, and projected water shortages. In the Western United States, agriculture is the dominant water use, and agricultural water users are being asked to conserve or share their water with other uses. Managing scarce water supplies at the local level often involves creative solutions, many of which are not well documented, especially in the agricultural sector. It is therefore critical to understand ideas to manage scarce water resources from the perspective of agricultural water users and those who work with them. In our research, we used interviews to explore how agricultural water users are managing increasing water scarcity in the Middle Rio Grande basin of central New Mexico and what enables or prevents them from taking innovative action to manage water scarcity. We hypothesized that we would find undocumented water use innovations born out of water users’ responses to lower and more variable water availability in recent years. We primarily recruited interviewees through snowball sampling, with a total of 42 (47%) agricultural water users, decision makers, and non-profit leaders influencing agricultural water governance in the basin accepting our invitation to participate. Our approximately one-hour, semi-structured and open-ended interviews explored agricultural water users’ lived experiences with water governance and opportunities to manage water scarcity. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using HyperRESEARCH software (version 4.5.4). Our results did not support our hypothesis. Instead, we found that agricultural water users struggled to implement well-known innovations amid the pressures of water scarcity, supply uncertainty, administrative complexity, and constraints on their time, labor, and money. Water users and decision makers were mutually interested in implementing innovations in crop choice, flexibility in water storage, use, and management, stricter enforcement of water use efficiency, and access to more efficient irrigation equipment. However, high costs, a lack of knowledge, education, and training, and challenges related to water distribution and scheduling prevented agricultural water users from accessing these and other innovations. Recommendations include incentive-based policies to promote agricultural water use innovations that require high initial costs, improved water accounting at the basin and regional levels to promote flexible and reliable access to agricultural water, targeted education and outreach programming on alternative irrigation methods and cropping patterns, and improved access to irrigation scheduling information to support agricultural water users in planning for water scarcity. 

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. 

The There Is No Poop Fairy campaign began in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2014 to encourage dog owners to pick up their dogs’ waste so that it does not contaminate the Rio Grande through stormwater runoff. This research aimed to understand the success of the campaign using a survey of local dog owners. Results suggest that the campaign was successful based on its reach and influence on self-reported pickup frequency and showed that those who were aware of the campaign reported higher frequencies of dog waste pickup, greater environmental concern, and greater awareness about the effects of dog waste on stormwater quality. 

Abstract Urban centers around the world are grappling with the challenges associated with population increases, drought, and projected water shortages. Potable water reuse (i.e., purification of municipal wastewater for reuse as drinking water) is an option for supplementing existing water supplies. Public perception research on potable water reuse has predominantly employed surveys with multiple‐choice questions that constrain survey respondents to describe their concerns by choosing from several response options. This research examines hundreds of write‐in responses to a large public survey in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to provide a detailed analysis of residents' questions and concerns about potable water reuse. Findings demonstrate that allowing respondents to voice their actual concerns adds richness and nuance that cannot be obtained from multiple‐choice response data alone. Especially with controversial resource considerations, such as potable water reuse, planners would benefit from a full understanding of the problem before engaging with the community. 

Abstract Urban communities around the world are grappling with the challenges associated with population increases, drought, and projected water shortages. With a substantial global shortfall between water supply and demand expected by 2030, water planning strategies must adapt to a new reality characterized by higher temperatures and less precipitation, requiring new ways of thinking about water management, use, and governance. Commonplace strategies such as water conservation and nonpotable water reuse might not be sufficient to adequately stretch water supplies in water‐scarce parts of the industrialized world. In the United States, planned potable water reuse (i.e., purification of domestic wastewater for reuse as drinking water) is emerging as a way forward to mitigate water shortages without significant changes to lifestyle, behavior, or infrastructure. But potable reuse is not the only solution: paradigm shifting and disruptive options that more holistically address water scarcity, such as composting toilets and market‐based approaches to water use, are also gaining traction, and they could be pursued alongside or instead of potable water reuse. However, these options would require more significant changes to lifestyles, behavior, infrastructure, and governance. While all of the options considered offer advantages, they each come with new concerns and challenges related to cost, public perception, social norms, and policy. The goal of this work is to consider a number of plausible solutions to water scarcity—partial and complete, traditional and disruptive—to stimulate forward‐looking thinking about the increasingly common global problem of water scarcity. This article is categorized under:Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of WaterEngineering Water > Planning Water