Making it rain

When Arizona’s policymakers talk about water, their main concern is usually how to manage underground aquifers or the Colorado River.

And when they’re really feeling the political pressure and grasping for straws, they throw out ideas like building a pipeline from the Mississippi River to Arizona, or spending $1 billion on a desalination plant in Mexico.

But researchers at Arizona State University are looking in a whole different direction: Up. They’re trying to pull water out of the air.

Atmospheric water harvesting, as the practice is known, is not going to magically solve Arizona’s water problems anytime soon. But researchers and engineers have been developing new technologies for years and they keep making breakthroughs.

The idea is to use gels, membranes, mesh or other materials1 to trap water from what researchers call the “really big invisible river” in the atmosphere. Then fans push air over the materials and the collected water is released when heat is applied.

Just looking at the Phoenix area, that invisible river carries 60 times more water — in the form of humidity — than the water Arizona gets from the Colorado River every year, ASU Prof. Paul Westerhoff told ASU News.

Like any new technology, one of the big obstacles is making it affordable. Right now, the cost has dropped to less than $1 per gallon, on par with bottled water. In less than a decade, it could cost about as much as municipal water, Westerhoff said.

For now, it’s a relatively cheap option for industries that need purified water, like semiconductor manufacturing, a booming sector of Arizona’s economy.

Although Arizona lawmakers are deep into discussions about groundwater regulations, they didn’t really address atmospheric water harvesting this legislative session.

But a bill with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 1558, would create a Water Technology Study Committee. One of the committee’s goals would be the “potential uses of emerging technologies to manage the water supply of the state more effectively.”

Time will tell if the Legislature takes a closer look at the invisible river in the sky next year. Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of research, and entrepreneurship, driving atmospheric water harvesting.

Just last month, researchers from around the world gathered at ASU to compare notes and start hammering out a 20-year roadmap for using humidity in the air to solve water shortages in Arizona and elsewhere.

What would you say to a cylinder you can strap to your backpack that gathers water from the air as you hike? That’s on the horizon, researchers said at the second annual International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit.

What about making it easier to grow crops in stacked layers indoors? Also an idea presented at the summit. And one that could be a big deal in Arizona, where agriculture accounts for 72% of water usage.

Atmospheric water harvesting could even be used to cool nuclear reactors, researchers said at the summit.

That would come in handy if the big utilities in Arizona get their way and start building more reactors.

Some of those ideas wouldn’t just benefit society as a whole, they could also be very profitable.

After researchers in Nevada developed technology last year that can pull water from the air even when humidity drops to 10%, they launched a startup called WAVR Technologies to start producing water harvesting equipment on a larger scale.

Their solar-powered system uses a hydrogel membrane, modeled on the skin of tree frogs, to trap water from the atmosphere.

There is enough water in just the first 30 feet of air above Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, to supply the county’s daily water needs, according to Engineering Prof. H. Jeremy Cho,2 who led the research team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and co-founded WAVR.

Their startup got a boost earlier this month, when ASU awarded a grant to WAVR to move from making prototypes to making products that could be used commercially.

There’s also SOURCE Global, a Scottsdale-based company that uses hydropanels to pull water from the air and store it. Basically, they combine solar panels with their water harvesting tech to cut down on the energy costs.

They made headlines two years ago when they partnered with the nonprofit Local First Arizona to deliver hydropanels to Tribal communities, a project that was made possible by a $7.5 million grant from the state.

Source didn’t stop there. They appear to have wholeheartedly embraced the entrepreneurial spirit and now sell water they harvested from the air in a can. It’s called Sky Wtr.

If we could put the Water Agenda in a can, it’d be sweeter than Yoohoo and make us a million bucks. Until then, we’ll depend on readers like you to upgrade to a paid subscription.

The hitch in all this is much of the research on atmospheric water harvesting depends on grants from the National Science Foundation.

And as you’re probably aware, the Trump administration isn’t exactly a fan of spending federal dollars on research.

Trump officials froze NSF grants shortly after the inauguration, including the review of grants that could be awarded in the future. Luckily for researchers, that review process has started back up.

The anti-DEI crusade also swept through NSF research in the first two months of the Trump administration.

NSF managers were told to select 10,000 grants, out of the 50,000 active ones, and flag keywords like “diversity,” “inclusion,” “women,” and “race.”

Another executive order targeted research connected to the “green new deal,” which likely would include atmospheric water harvesting. But NSF officials didn’t include those projects in the review they were ordered to conduct, Science reported.

Request denied: A judge put the kibosh on an attempt to establish more regulations for the San Pedro River, the Herald/Review’s Shar Porier reports. The Center for Biological Diversity wanted state officials to designate the San Pedro groundwater basin as a threatened basin, which would help create an active management area. But a Maricopa County Superior Court judge said state law gives discretion to state water officials and he couldn’t force their hand.

Inching forward: Local and federal officials have been working for years to build a big, new port of entry near Douglas for commercial traffic. State officials just gave that effort a boost by agreeing to pay $2 million to help fund the port’s water system, the Herald/Review’s Lyda Longa reports. The grant from the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority was the final piece of the $20 million that officials needed to start the first phase of construction on the port’s water and sewer lines.

Keeping cool: A year after the City of Phoenix launched a chilled water fountain program, it has been so popular they’re expanding it, ABC15’s Adam Mintzer reports. The temperature of the water in those fountains stays at around 70 degrees, and they’re cleaned regularly. Each one costs about $10,000 and the city is planning to add at least three new fountains before summer hits.

Saving water: SRP teamed up with the Phoenix Zoo to save 7 million gallons of water, KJZZ’s Hailey Jimenez reported. The utility awarded an $82,000 grant so the zoo can use water more efficiently, including in those ponds where hippos like to hang out. The grant also dovetails with SRP’s goal to save 5 billion gallons of water over the next decade.

Uranium concerns: SRP and the other large utilities in Arizona want to build more nuclear reactors to meet growing electricity demand. Those reactors would need to get uranium from somewhere, and Arizona is one of the few states that has any. No plans have been set in motion yet, but Uranium Energy Corp bought old mining claims in 2011 and three years ago they recommended moving ahead with drilling in the mountains east of Roosevelt Lake, AZFamily’s Morgan Loew and Cody Lillich report. That raises concerns about uranium mining possibly contaminating local water supplies, which already happened on the Navajo Nation.

Since we’re talking about water in the sky, let’s take a look at the weather.

Forecasters at AZFamily are saying record-breaking heat for March is headed to Arizona. And that rain last week likely won’t have a big impact on drought conditions in the state.

Over at 12News, they’ve got tips to stay hydrated as heat rises and summer approaches. Meanwhile, officials are worried about a repeat of the thousands of emergency room visits they saw during heat waves last year.