By Jeff Harrison

In early 2003, two young boys from Peoria, Ariz., died mysteriously, a tragedy later found to have been caused by contaminated water. The culprit turned out to be a microscopic parasite, Naegleria fowleri, which entered through the boys’ noses and destroyed their brain tissues. The incident panicked residents and health officials alike.

Clinically, researchers can detect N. fowleri, but know little else of its life cycle, how it travels, and most important, how to detect its presence in the water supply. The tiny creature is the subject of a new study at the University of Arizona, one of 21 water-related research projects funded by the Technology and Research Initiative Fund, or TRIF, passed by voters as the Prop 301 initiative.

All of the projects look at fundamental questions about Arizona’s most basic resource – water. The projects have drawn dozens of researchers and educators from four research centers at the UA, all with extensive and internationally recognized expertise in water-related research, sustainability planning and technology development.

Those centers include the Environmental Research Lab (ERL) and the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC), both in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing Center and the Center for Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHRA), both in the College of Engineering and Mines.

UA President Peter Likins, who has aggressively backed water research, says this effort “is a reflection of the international stature of our faculty, and the University of Arizona’s worldwide reputation as a center of excellence for water-related science.”

While UA researchers work on water problems as far away as the Middle East and Africa, TRIF-funded projects will instead focus on water problems specific to the state. Thus far, the five-year water initiative has received $8.8 million from the state.

The projects range from how to ensure water supplies to a growing and changing population, to detecting unknown or little-understood organisms and contaminants with the potential to inflict harm and even death.

Managing water supplies
School children in Arizona learn about that state’s economic base as the five Cs– copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate. Computers could even be considered as a sixth. All of these rely on dependable water sources, although their needs vary somewhat. The purity of water used by the mines, for instance, is less important than for agriculture and drinking water. The ultra-pure water used to manufacture silicon wafers for semiconductors, on the other hand, needs to be totally free of even microscopic amounts of contaminants.

“Arizona has been in a drought forever,” says Peter Wierenga, director of the UA Water Resources Research Center in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“People here have been forced to think about and plan for the future. Because Arizona is such a dry state, we’ve probably thought more about water use than many other states.”

Besides being scarce, water supplies have also been unpredictable. Even droughts that span years are sometimes punctuated with rainstorms that are as much a threat as relief.

Archaeological evidence shows humans have been scratching a living out of the desert for thousands of years, and developed, or tried to develop, technologies to help smooth out the variations in climate and water supplies. Drier weather patterns may have accelerated the demise of giant mammals preyed upon by hunters armed with huge stone spear points at the end of the last ice age. The invention of ceramics was driven in part by the need to transport and store water. Permanent settlers like the Hohokam Indians dug and maintained canal systems for irrigation.

The foundation for Arizona’s accelerated urban growth evolved from a prolonged drought at the end of the 19th century. While many farmers and ranchers were fleeing the state, civic leaders persuaded the federal government to build a series of dams on the Salt River. These were designed to tame the wild floods that funneled out of eastern Arizona forests, and to provide a constant flow of irrigation for Phoenix-area farmers and electricity for the town that would eventually become the country’s fifth largest city.

With a population nearing 6 million, Arizona is now in another prolonged drought that is straining water supplies. The value of water as a commodity has increased to the point that developers of a proposed community near the Grand Canyon agreed to ship potable water more than 200 miles away from the Colorado River, rather than possibly damage the canyon’s ecology by tapping groundwater on site.

“How to sustain growth is a big issue for the technology people and the policy people,” says Sharon Megdal, a water policy analyst with WRRC. “How do we make sure we have the water needed to sustain growth in terms of quantity and quality?”

Megdal, who organizes briefings about water policy for legislators, says Phoenix and Tucson had the foresight to develop a framework for managing groundwater and surface water supplies.

In contrast, many rural Arizonans sit on much smaller aquifers and rivers where supply issues are more problematic. A WRRC conference in 2003 drew more than 200 managers and other officials from rural Arizona to address many of those issues.

Moving and managing surface and groundwater also brings contamination risks from dissolved chemicals and waterborne pathogens. Ian Pepper, a microbiologist and director of the UA Environmental Research Lab, says Arizonans will also have to come to grips with re-using water in ways many would rather not think about, including sewage effluent.

“Some academic research is very esoteric, and the public’s eyes glaze over when you talk about it. This is not about modeling supplies 20 or 50 years out. We do research that affects the quality of water that you’re going to drink,” says Pepper.

Four centers on the UA campus are the hubs for TRIF and other water research
SAHRA
The Center for Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas, or SAHRA, is one of the premier centers of its kind, and an offshoot of the UA department of hydrology and water resources, which itself is consistently ranked as one of the top academic programs in the country.

SAHRA was created in large part because much of the world’s population growth is happening in the one-third of the Earth that is either desert or semi-desert. Sustaining growth in these regions requires water supplies that can keep up with development. The goal of SAHRA researchers is bringing science to bear on the practical problems of water resources policy, management and operational decision making. That requires coordinating a broad range of scientific disciplines among scientists, policy and decision makers, and the general public.

This coordination involves the diverse talents of physical scientists, behavioral scientists (including economists), educators, practicing engineers (from both public agencies and private companies), legal experts, and decision makers. This challenge can be considered met if new technologies, analytical tools and modeling approaches are rapidly assimilated into the understanding and management of water resources.

UPW
Semiconductor manufacturing is one of the most dynamic industries in the world, a high-risk, high-reward arena that represents a sizeable chunk of Arizona’s manufacturing sector. Successful companies need to be fast on their feet to survive. Semiconductor manufacturing, by its nature, requires large amounts of toxic chemicals and water that is totally free of contaminants. But existing successfully in this technical landscape means that environmental factors are often not incorporated into the manufacturing process.

The NSF/SRC Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing began to develop the science, technology and educational methods needed to lead the semiconductor industry on environmental issues. The UA leads this consortium of six institutions in a unique interdisciplinary collaboration to develop environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes and tools for the semiconductor industry.

The center incorporates faculty and students, including undergraduates, from the UA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its Lincoln Laboratories, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University and Arizona State University.

Farhang Shadman, a UA professor of chemical and environmental engineering and director of the center, is internationally renowned for his research in applying chemical reaction engineering to semiconductor manufacturing, advanced materials processing and environmental contamination control. Shadman’s research grants in this area alone total in the millions of dollars.

The center’s facilities at the UA include a semiconductor fabrication facility (including a class 1000 clean room); a complete Ultrapure Water Pilot Research Laboratory; a nanofabrication facility and an integrated optics characterization laboratory.

WRRC
The UA Water Resources Research Center is the oldest water center on campus, and is located in the UA’s oldest college, Agriculture and Life Sciences. It incorporates the UA’s Land-Grant mission of education and outreach, and since 1957, has offered programs that focus on critical water issues within Arizona, providing expertise on state and regional water management and policy.

The center’s Project WET, for example, has helped educate thousands of school children about the history of water use in Arizona, and about the complexity of those issues as they have evolved.

Sharon Megdal, who recently joined WRRC, has worked closely on state water issues for many years. She writes a column on water issues and regularly briefs legislators, the governor and state agencies on issues such as the Groundwater Management Act, securing and managing sustainable water supplies and issues surrounding public versus private water companies.

The center serves as a home base for a variety of research not funded by TRIF, such as treating arsenic in drinking water, the impact of animals on vegetation near water catchments, turf irrigation and tribal water rights. And each year, the center also hosts a statewide conference for water managers and other stakeholders, most recently on rural water management.

“The center is here to provide science-based technical, economic, legal and policy expertise necessary for water development, use and conservation,” says Megdal. “What this program enables us to do is focus on sustaining water supplies for Arizona.”

WQC
While the bulk of water research is on education and planning, the Water Quality Center (WQC) at the UA Environmental Research Lab has zeroed in on more immediate questions, like “Is this stuff safe to drink?”

Director Ian Pepper says, with enthusiasm, that he has a great job.

“Basically, we deal with a laundry list of filth and pestilence,” he quips. Research at the WQC spans water security, agricultural, commercial and industrial contaminants, waste water and mining discharges, as well as issues surrounding potable water.

One of Pepper’s colleagues in the UA department of soil, water and environmental science, Charles Gerba, is studying N. fowleri and problems with other water-borne pathogens. Other research focuses on how sterilized mine tailings can be made fertile again through the use of treated solids from waste water; whether a remote Indian community can use its waste water for local agriculture; and new methods for detecting viruses in drinking water.

“We really are doing something with TRIF money,” Pepper says. “It’s not just vaporizing.”

Choosing the Projects
There were no shortages of research projects to fund with TRIF money. Gary Woodard, SAHRA’s associate director for knowledge transfer, said the UA initially fielded nearly 100 initial proposals for funding. Panels of 10 to 13 experts selected 21 projects that include 54 researchers from four colleges and 19 departments and other units on campus. Additionally, 72 agencies outside the UA provided $300,000 in matching funds.

Outstanding students studying water issues also will benefit from this package. Five undergraduates were each awarded a $4,000 fellowship. Four graduate students received $20,000 each.