Dr. Neha Gupta, project manager at the University of Arizona, joined the Tucson Now desk to discuss a multi‑institution effort aimed at confronting Arizona’s mounting water challenges. The effort, known as the Arizona Tri‑University Recharge and Water Reliability Project, brought together researchers, students and faculty from three public state universities to develop tools and strategies for increasing groundwater recharge and water reliability across the state. The team framed its work against a backdrop of declining Colorado River deliveries and a hotter, drier climate that is stressing existing supplies, and the project focuses on practical, location‑specific steps communities can take to capture and store water underground.
The study modeled water budgets for all 51 of Arizona’s groundwater basins, producing basin‑by‑basin profiles that map where recharge opportunities exist and how much water might be retained. One of the central findings reported by the team is that statewide water storage is declining. The researchers also found that more than 95 percent of Arizona’s precipitation is lost to evaporation—an inefficiency the report argues can be meaningfully reduced. Even modest decreases in evaporative loss, the project shows, could translate into useful additional water supply when applied across the landscape and combined with targeted recharge actions.
Throughout its analysis, the project identified geographic areas with particularly high potential for recharge and for capturing excess runoff. The Mogollon Rim emerged as an area of interest, and the authors highlighted specific land‑management practices that could improve recharge outcomes. Recommendations include forest thinning and improved flood and fire management to alter how and where water moves overland, in addition to engineered approaches for collecting runoff. The report organizes more than 50 distinct approaches to water collection and recharge into a “Recharge Opportunities Matrix” designed to help local water managers compare options for their basins and select projects that match local conditions, costs and likely benefits.
A largely dry riverbed beneath a highway bridge, illustrating low surface flows and the groundwater recharge challenges highlighted in the statewide water-supply study.
The project team prepared a Decision Support Framework intended to guide communities through planning and prioritizing investments in recharge and storage. That framework, paired with the basin profiles, is meant to move decision‑makers beyond one‑size‑fits‑all solutions by providing the localized data and options needed for basin‑specific planning. In addition to natural recharge opportunities and land management measures, the matrix and framework cover engineered collection systems, small‑scale retention and infiltration projects, and operational changes that could influence how much water reaches the subsurface over time. The report is presented as a toolbox for municipalities, water providers and state agencies weighing investments in long‑term resilience.
A researcher appears on the Tucson Now set during an in-studio interview about the Tri‑University Recharge and Water Reliability Project, discussing strategies to address Arizona’s water challenges.
The collaboration draws on the combined expertise of the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. Project leaders say the effort was launched in 2023 and that the current report builds on that initial work. Dr. Neha Gupta noted that the project honors the legacy of hydrology researcher Dr. Thomas Meixner, who helped initiate the effort before his death. The study was prepared at the request of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and received funding from the Arizona Board of Regents’ Technology and Research Initiative Fund, linking academic research directly to state decision‑making needs.
The authors emphasize that the study does not present a single silver‑bullet solution; rather, it provides a set of linked products—basin profiles, a Decision Support Framework and the Recharge Opportunities Matrix—that are intended to be used together to tailor strategies to local conditions. The report’s mapping and quantification of where recharge is plausible, combined with land‑management recommendations such as forest thinning and improved flood and fire planning, give water managers a structure for testing and implementing interventions. The team also cataloged a wide range of possible interventions, more than 50 in all, so that communities can weigh technical feasibility, cost and potential yield when considering projects.
The Tucson Now interview with Dr. Gupta was recorded for public viewing, and the segment can be watched through the program’s video player. The research team has made its findings available to state agencies and local water managers as part of an effort to translate academic study into on‑the‑ground action. The work is positioned as a planning resource, offering data and options for reducing evaporative losses, capturing runoff and increasing subsurface storage at a time when traditional surface supplies are under growing pressure.
For water managers and community officials considering next steps, the report supplies tools intended to support local decision‑making rather than prescribe one path. Its basin‑specific modeling, combined with the Decision Support Framework and the Recharge Opportunities Matrix, is meant to be applied in a modular way so that local leaders can identify and prioritize projects that fit their geography, budget and regulatory context. The project’s backers say these materials are designed to inform discussions about investments in recharge and related land and water management changes as Arizona adapts to diminished surface‑water reliability and long‑term climatic shifts.
The full ATUR report, executive summary, basin hydrologic profiles, and Recharge Opportunities Matrix were publicly released on June 17, 2026, and are available for download from the University of Arizona's CCASS website. Coverage by The Arizona Republic highlighted researchers' optimism about practical recharge pathways—especially in the Mogollon Rim—despite models projecting a drier climate through 2060–2099 and continued storage declines, with the project receiving a one-year extension.
Estimates in the final report indicate that drywells and retention/detention basins in the Phoenix Active Management Area currently capture roughly 94,300 acre‑feet of stormwater per year, with capture volumes that could rise to about 165,000 acre‑feet by 2058 under projected urbanization and climate scenarios.
The ATUR team conducted nearly 90 meetings and workshops with more than 80 organizations and individuals—including Tribal, federal, state and local land and water managers—to develop and validate the Decision Support Framework and other project tools.
The project produced the first statewide, spatially consistent lineament‑density map and a statewide karst‑feature analysis to help identify focused recharge zones capable of rapidly conveying water to depths of thousands of feet.
A statewide flood‑enhanced recharge (FER) suitability analysis found the greatest FER potential in the Basin and Range province—notably Black Rock and Goodwin Washes on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, areas near the San Pedro River, and parts of the southwest—while FER potential is relatively limited across much of the Mogollon Rim, with higher potential identified along some reaches of the Salt River near Theodore Roosevelt Lake.
About 40 faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoctoral scholars contributed to the ATUR research effort.