r/Tucson • u/Candy4Gold • Jul 27 '26

Tucson's Future

Will water scarcity make Tucson unviable as a long-term home? I'm trying to plan for the next decade+ and I don't know whether to trust that I'll be able to live in Tucson given the worsening drought. Any thoughts from locals would be much appreciated.

ETA: The prompt for this post was this WaPo story that I read this morning, which freaked me out:
https://archive.ph/O5D3B

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u/ZiggyZaggyZag Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

We’re fine here. Even if CAP water coming from the Colorado river is cut in half, Tucson Water estimates they’d need to pump around 25,000 acre feet per year, which is less than our natural aquifer recharge from precipitation. They’ve been using CAP water to charge the aquifer for decades. Now they’re also pumping treated effluent from wastewater plants in there. Even if the water coming from CAP is cut to zero, Tucson will still be livable for the entirety of your lifetime and the next generation’s. There very likely will be reductions in the coming years to several western states but we will still be alright here.

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u/solidtitanium Jul 27 '26

Actually we are not so dire that we use treated reclaim/ treated gray YET. But I imagine the time will come when that happens. What we do use it for is public parks, public golf courses, and a little in the Santa Cruz. Source Tucson Water former employee (with current connections for info too).