La Sección mexicana y la Sección estadounidense de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA/IBWC) han publicado el Estudio Binacional del Acuífero Transfronterizo Río Santa Cruz, una importante contribución a la caracterización de las aguas subterráneas compartidas por Arizona y Sonora.

The US and Mexican Sections of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) have published a Binational Study of the Transboundary Santa Cruz Aquifer, an important contribution to characterizing groundwater shared by Arizona and Sonora. Developed under the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP), the study is the product of sustained scientific and technical collaboration between the two countries.

WRRC Associate Director Jamie McEvoy attended the 2026 Agribusiness and Water Council (ABWC) Conference last Friday, where speakers discussed key areas of interest including agricultural production, energy, industry, and water.

As we launch another season of Arizona Water Festivals and Arizona Project WET (APW) programming across the state, we are thrilled to share some changes and new opportunities for 2026–2027! We are excited to announce that Kirstyn Kay has stepped into the role of Director of Arizona Project WET, following Lisa Townsend’s transition to her dream job in Oregon.

Mexico has agreed to share the burden of recent Colorado River water cuts with the Lower Basin states. On September 2, representatives of the United States and Mexico signed Minute 334 of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), an agreement that supports cooperative management of the river’s water in the context of severe drought and record low reservoir levels.

Kelly Mott Lacroix first joined the WRRC as a graduate research associate in 2011. She received her PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences from the U of A in 2015 and continued her work at the WRRC as a research analyst until 2016, when she joined the US Forest Service (USFS) as a hydrologist in Washington, DC.

Fall Fest 2026, hosted by U of A’s Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR) on September 9 at the ENR2 building, attracted participants from across campus and beyond, including several WRRC staff and graduate students. Two sections, Water & Weather and Indigenous Resilience, shared the program.

WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal recently sat down with Mikayla Kelley from U of A University Marketing and Communications to answer questions about the US Bureau of Reclamation’s recently released 10-year framework for Colorado River water allocations and what it means for Arizona and Tucson. The September 8 Q&A, titled Water Wisdom Following the New Colorado River Framework, covered the new framework’s reductions to Arizona’s Colorado River water deliveries, Tucson Water’s use of stored Central Arizona Project (CAP) water, and the importance of continued water conservation.

University of Arizona researchers are helping design a new large-scale hydrologic model driven by AI. Hydrologic models help describe and predict how water moves through the environment by simulating the physical interactions of plants, land, water, and people. Communities and industries use these models to prepare for droughts and floods, and to understand their changing water availability. Laura Condon, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences and interim director of Biosphere 2, uses “physically based equations” to create models that can answer questions about how a certain stream or groundwater system might behave under various conditions.

Arizona has been in a drought since the 1990s. Today, increasing temperatures, a growing population, and declining groundwater levels exacerbate the scarcity of our state’s water resources.