City of Tucson to implement plan for sustainable water future

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The City of Tucson and Tucson Water discussed a new master plan for creating a sustainable and resilient water future in a public forum. The plan is called One Water 2100, emphasizing the city's plan to collect and store water from multiple sources.

"It's so that we don’t just rely on one water resource, but when we have it available we store it, we use it but we store it for the future," Assistant City Manager Timothy Thomure said.

He said the plan is to guide the city to manage water while climate conditions change. While Tucson already has a robost water supply, Thomure said it's important to continue that effort in the long-term future. The goal of One Water 2100 is to ensure the sustainable future for the next 80 years. He said the city already uses several sources of water including rain and ground water.

"It's that we’re using rain and storm water that we are using recycled water to make sure that we have many choices,” he said.

The Department of Interior announced Tuesday that Arizona will receive about a fifth of its Colorado River allotment as the water levels are rapidly decreasing.

"The Colorado River is the largest water supply for Tucson, and it is in peril we know that the rive is in crisis but that does not mean that Tucson is in crisis," he said. "Through this planning effort and past efforts are making sure that we don’t rely on just one resource.”

Thomure said the plan will build off and grow the practices already implemented in Southern Arizona like rain water harvesting. Community members in the forum like Odessa Draheim said she already installed a simple rain harvesting system in her yard.

"We don’t have a giant system we have a small system where we collect water in buckets and use them in the garden later on,” she said.

She grew up in Tucson and was fascinated with monsoon floods. She said she's proud of Tucson for recycling the rain water and putting it back in circulation.

"The wash would be like a river so we would get into our cardboard boxes and we'd ride them like a boat," said Draheim. "And I remember how much it was — it was a lot and where was it going?"

In Draheim's household, they try not to waste a lot of water.

"Just in general short showers and I'm on everyone’s case in the household," she said. "I'm excited that Tucson is top tier for water innovation."

The master plan will be implemented sometime in 2023. In the meantime, city leaders are looking for feedback, which can be given at the City of Tucson's website.