Water conservation is an ethical challenge. Integrating ethical water education into our programs instills a sense of stewardship, ownership, and responsibility in our youth, shaping behaviors and inspiring solutions to our water resource issues. Each year, 4th-grade students across Coconino County are invited to participate in a Water Ethics Contest. The contest, which began in 2010, is sponsored by the Coconino Plateau Watershed Partnership (a branch of the Coconino Plateau Water Advisory Council) and hosted by Willow Bend Environmental Education Center.

Groundwater Governance and Assessment in a Transboundary Setting
As groundwater reliance is increasing across the globe, including the United States-Mexico region, the complications of governing transboundary groundwater become more prominent. In their chapter of the new book Lake Governance, authors Sharon Megdal and Jacob Petersen-Perlman discuss groundwater governance and assessment, with a focus on the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP) along the U.S.-Mexico border. After providing an overview of groundwater governance in practice, the authors discuss commonly accepted principles for governing groundwater and recent developments in legal principles for transboundary groundwater governance. They explain how TAAP studies have been made possible by a cooperative framework agreed upon by American and Mexican partners through the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). The authors highlight the value of the TAAP framework for the Arizona-Sonora border region and suggest it could be applied elsewhere. Edited by Velma Grover and Gail Krantzberg, the book can be ordered at https://www.crcpress.com/Lake-Governance/Grover-Krantzberg/p/book/9781138633759. Please email smegdal@email.arizona.edu or jacobpp@email.arizona.edu for more information about the chapter. More information about the TAAP can be found at https://wrrc.arizona.edu/TAAP.
Recent News

The low-cost standard registration for the WRRC's upcoming conference, Arizona’s Agricultural Outlook: Water, Climate, and Sustainability, closes on June 30! Register today to ensure your spot before the price goes up. In addition to the diverse set of speakers and topics scheduled for the in-person day on July 12, the WRRC has organized two days of virtual programming on July 13 and 14.

Summer break is a good time for reading. Although fiction is my preferred genre, I was eager to read the fourth and latest book by William M. and Rosemarie Alley, The Water Recycling Revolution: Tapping into the Future

On May 16, the WRRC organized a meeting in Nogales, Arizona to discuss current and future opportunities for collaboration on the federally funded Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP).

Water is an important consideration for most businesses, but it is absolutely essential for agriculture. Arizona agriculture exports food and fiber to 70 countries across the globe as well as throughout the US.

On May 16, the WRRC hosted a panel discussion on the documentary film INHABITANTS: Indigenous Perspectives On Restoring Our World. The panel featured Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, Assistant Specialist, UArizona Indigenous Resilience Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment; film co-directors Costa Boutsikaris and Anna Palmer; and moderator Rebecca Tsosie, JD, Regents Professor of Law, UArizona James E. Rogers College of Law.