![]() But what's actually happening is the water is slowly going down and percolating into the aquifer and back and turning into groundwater. KMIEC: We fill these large reservoirs up. SIEGLER: This basin is mostly dry dirt with occasional stalks of green grass from recent monsoons, not exactly what you picture when you think of a city's water plant, though another basin in front of us does have some water. KMIEC: It looks like about a 40-acre basin, the one we're standing next to. SIEGLER: You can think of it like a secret reservoir hidden underneath this vast Sonoran Desert, with its blazing sun and saguaro cactus. KMIEC: Because we've banked more than 5 1/2 years of excess Colorado River water in these aquifers already. SIEGLER: But the other, even bigger reason why Kmiec isn't up all night worrying? KMIEC: It's all about adaptation and making sure you - the water that you use, particularly in the desert, is for what you need. Tucson uses the same amount of water as it did in the 1980s, yet it's added 200,000 more people. The first is aggressive conservation, like water recycling. SIEGLER: It's not? Kmiec says there are two big reasons why. JOHN KMIEC: And now we have a shortage condition on the Colorado River, but it's really not going to affect the Tucson Basin. ![]() Tucson gets the bulk of all of its drinking water from the river, but there's no five-alarm fire right here. EFT HIDDEN WATER PATCHKIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Tucson's water manager, John Kmiec, is standing on a patch of desert shrub more than 330 miles from the shrinking Colorado River. ![]() But as NPR's Kirk Siegler reports, in Arizona anyway, few people appear to be panicking. And the fast-growing states there that rely on the Colorado River are seeing their water deliveries being cut out like never before. It is drier than it has been in the Southwest for 1,200 years. ![]()
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