Matt Weiser

The Santa Cruz River was once the lifeblood of Tucson, Arizona. Due to heavy development and groundwater overdraft, it hasn’t seen year-round flow in 70 years. The city plans to revive the storied desert river with recycled effluent.

THE CITY OF Tucson, Arizona, officially got serious about rainwater harvesting five years ago, viewing it as a cost-effective tool to reduce demand for potable water. In 2012, the city’s water utility, Tucson Water, began offering rebates to its residential customers to subsidize installation of rainwater catchment systems, both to divert water onto landscaping and store it in cisterns. Later, it expanded the program to include grants and loans to help low-income households harvest rainwater.

It’s now widely understood that a century of misguided – but well-intentioned – policies over the past 100 years produced forests that are too densely packed with small trees and too vulnerable to possibly catastrophic fires. Water supplies are also a concern, because the forests are nature’s water-storage sponges.