Resource Shortage Water Resource Shortage Term Paper

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One potential solution for farmers would be to switch to a subsurface drip irrigation system that could permanently cut farmers' water use by 25 to 50%. This would alleviate some of the need for conservation and free up more state water reserves for urban locations during times of regional drought. ("University of Arizona studies underground irrigation,"2005, U.S. Water News Online)

Arizona farmers are resistant to drip irrigation, however, and prefer so-called flood or rainwater-propelled irrigation, which is used on about 95% of Arizona crops. "Farmers have a hard time justifying drip irrigation because water is relatively cheap and drip systems can cost from $500 to $2,000 per acre to install." ("University of Arizona studies underground irrigation,"2005, U.S. Water News Online) But not only farmers place cost above conservation. Cost is another prohibition for private residents. Many persons have migrated to Arizona because of the region's cheapness, especially retirees. Converting a home to a more environmentally sound energy model can be prohibitively expensive.

Consider the Phoenix 'gray water' proposal, which suggested installing two sets of pipes in new homes in northeast Phoenix so residents could reuse some of their wastewater as so-called gray water, or water that was below minimum drinking safety requirements that would normally be passed into the sewage system. "In addition to the standard pipes that send wastewater (or black water) to the sewer, a second set would direct cleaner water (gray water) from the washing machine or the shower onto the landscaping. It would save water by reusing it and cut back on water bills for outside irrigation." ("Phoenix snubs idea of wastewater reuse," 2005, U.S. Water News Online) Most residents felt that the $200 tax credits to homebuilders who added the piping for gray-water use, was simply not enough to defray the added cost of installing the new system in comparison to a more traditional system.

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Commercial and residential zones, rural and urban areas, Indian tribes are all facing water supply challenges, all for different reasons -- but all with the same challenge of the fact that water in its immediate supply is cheap, conservation conversion is costly, yet if measures are not implemented soon, Arizona's droughts will only worsen. (Norton, 2003) Individual awareness and conservation projects continue, and Arizona water management entities have made laudable efforts, in addition to the efforts of cities to ensure their water storage and delivery systems are modernized, lining canals and automating pumping and canal controls to help conserve substantial amounts of water. (Norton, 2003) But more efforts are necessary to give residents and communities financial insensitive to defray the costs of conservation.

Some ideas might be to offer tax rebates to consumers to convert to gray water system, and added reserve credits to communities such as Las Vegas that make real efforts to enact strict conservation measures during times of drought, rather than half-hearted measures. To supplement farmers in rural area's water needs, the federal government might be sought to provide added assistance to farmers that make use of innovative drip methods, to enable them to stay financially afloat against competing farmers who make use of the water-wasteful but cheaper flooding methods -- or to place an added tax burden upon farmers who waste water, given that such a substantial portion of the state's water needs is directed towards agricultural use.

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