PHOENIX — Researchers hope a new computer program will help Arizona solve some of its water woes as the state struggles with a 12-year drought and rapid growth.
The program, called WaterSim, was designed by Arizona State University researchers and uses existing models and data to produce water-use scenarios for urban Maricopa County, the state's most populous county.
The point of the program, researchers say, is to unlock enough information to include everyone in the decisions about water management.
"It's about climate change. It's about growth," said Patricia Gober, one of WaterSim's architects and co-director of ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City, which studies growth and water issues.
"Does anyone really believe we're going to have 8 million people here without some sort of change?" she said. "Let's make decisions now. What can we do to make us more resilient?"
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WaterSim is available online to the public and allows users to come up with scenarios for Arizona. They can cause a drought, rewrite water laws, slow growth, make a river disappear, and so on.
In one scenario, drought and climate change would force residential water users to cut consumption to about 120 gallons a day per person by 2030 to avoid depleting aquifers. That would put the Phoenix metro area on par with Tucson, where smaller water supplies and higher rates have forced residents to adopt a more desert-friendly lifestyle.
Currently, the average Phoenix area resident uses nearly 170 gallons of water a day.
WaterSim isn't the only program producing models and forecasts. Two of Arizona's water suppliers, Central Arizona Project and Salt River Project, have their own programs, as well.
SRP Sim has been used for about 20 years to help the water utility manage its resources on the Salt and Verde rivers and in hundreds of wells around the Phoenix metro area.
And CAP hydrologists recently completed a new simulation of drought conditions on the Colorado River, concluding that a shortage could occur on the river as early as 2011.
Researchers say if cities can see the risk to groundwater resources in a regional drought, they can search for ways to manage that resource more cooperatively.
