Site Notes

El Convento along the Santa Cruz River, circa 1910
El Convento along the Santa Cruz River, circa 1910
Arizona Historical Society
Image and caption used with
permission of and provided via
email by the Arizona Historical Society
Water is scarce in our desert. All of us need to protect it, preserve it, and plan for the future of the desert dwellers who follow us in this spectacular climate to ensure they too, will have access to clean, safe water.

This site's author, a transplanted easterner, has lived in Tucson for more than 40 years. She came to the University of Arizona as an undergraduate in 1977, and knew that the desert would become her forever home, because of its gorgeous climate, and the ability to swim outside year-round, impossible in the cold climate of the east coast.

The site background image is a picture taken by this site's author while looking down into her sister's pool.

Users may read as much or as little as they like. The menu at the top of the page provides easy access to all parts of the site.

Questions or comments may be emailed to Dr. Denise Meeks, dmeeks@arizona.edu or tucsonkosmicgirl@gmail.com

Please respect the copyrights of all sources listed on this website.

CC BY-NC 4.0 Non-Commercial International License for this author's materials.


 
History

The author is a science journalism student in the University of Arizona School of Journalism.

WATER resides in a godaddy server account paid for annually by the author. It was started during the Fall 2020 semester as a project for JOUR 565 Issues in Covering Science and the Environment, taught by Dr. Susan Swanberg.

It was expanded significantly during the Spring 2022 semester when the author was enrolled in EWRS 596B Water Policy in Arizona and Semi-arid Regions, taught by Dr. Sharon Megdal.

During the Fall 2022 semester, several subsections, especially those focusing on climate change research were added as as part of a project for Professor Carol Schwalbe's GLO 505 Media and Climate Change course.

The project proposal was written as part of the requirements for Dr. Monica Chadha's Fall 2022 JOUR 508 Journalism Theory and Practice course.


 
Research

Hundreds of academic articles, media and government reports, archive documents, laws and regulations, newsletters, videos, static and interactive maps, charts, graphs and images have been analyzed, evaluated and synthesized. Many are included as endnotes, references and clickable data table items on this site, which includes more than 70 sections. There are more than 1,500 Acronyms & Abbreviations, Glossary and Units definitions provided in the Terminology section.

The author is a member of the U of A Water Whys team, which is developing scientifically accurate and easy-to-understand graphical responses to questions to help the public understand current water-related events.

The author attended the inaugural CAP University session, Introduction to CAP, on November 18, 2020. This three hour virtual event, presented by CAP board members and leadership team, provided a high-level overview of the CAP system. She also attended the CAP University session, Deeper Dive on Power, on December 6, 2022. This session provided detailed analyses of hydro, solar and nuclear power sources related to and produced by CAP facilities.

The author attended Watershed Management Group's Virtual Rainwater Harvesting class on March 16, 2023.

The site consists of about 15,000 lines of HTML, CSS and JavaScript code written by the author.

The site is continuously updated to reflect the current water situation in Arizona, Pima County and the world. The author regularly reads articles and newsletters provided by:

The site also includes information from the following, as well as other resources:

In April 2022, water-related information was provided electronically by:


 
Navigation

Menu: Click on a menu item to move to any website section.

Scrolling: Use the blue vertical track bar on the righthand side of the website page to scroll up and down.

Magnifying glass: if an image appears with a magnifying glass next to its caption, highlighting the image with the mouse will enable the user to zoom in on parts of the image.

Definitions: highlighting an underlined, italicized termdisplay a definition will display a definition for that term.

Lists: this symbol ➔ next to the list title indicates that highlighting an item in that list will display a picture of that item on the righthand side of the page.

Videos: look for the items with double blue borders.

Tables: look in the data table column headings. This symbol ➔ next to the table title indicates that highlighting an item in that table will display a picture of that item on the righthand side of the page. If a double arrow ↕ appears next to a column heading, clicking on ↕ will sort the table by the contents of that column. If a check mark ✔ appears next to a column heading, clicking on an item in that column will open a new window and display the document related to the currently highlighted table row.

Water sounds: throughout the website there are the sounds of water indicated by:

Play the sound, try to guess what it is then put the cursor on to find out if you were correct.

Trivia questions: throughout the website there are more than 50 trivia questions indicated by:

Highlight the question to check your answer.

Endnotes: within the text, click on a footnote number to locate the footnote reference. Click on the number to the left of the reference to return to reading the section, or click on the footnote reference number to open a new window and access the footnote reference.


 
Credits

The author thanks her sister Laura Fuchs and niece Emily Fuchs for assistance in gathering and recording sound effects.

Thanks to DeEtte Person, Central Arizona Project Public Information Officer, who oversees media relations, social media and various community outreach efforts. Ms. Person provided valuable information about CAP University during our Zoom interview on November 30, 2020.

Thanks to James Brown, hydrologist and former CRAO Permit and Regulatory Compliance Officer, Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department and ADEQ for some of the acronyms and terms.

This site is also available from the Education and Outreach section of Pima County's Wastewater Reclamation page as Water's Role on Earth and in the Science section of Journalist's Toolbox.

Some water trivia facts and definitions provided by:

Some defintions derived from:

Thanks to Dynamic Drive's public domain Image Power Zoomer for the jQuery image magnification code.

Thanks to Zoom Search Engine for the free Search included on the Terminology tab.

Thanks to W3C Markup Validation Service for its free link service.

Additional information on Creative Commons licenses is available from Creative Commons.


 
Permissions

Thanks to the following for providing written permission for the use of their information and images, as noted in captions:

The magnifying glass image was provided by Wikimedia Commons, by user AlphaZeta, Aug. 28, 2011, under the public domain. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/
8/87/20190106130931%21Magnifying_glass_icon_mgx2.svg

Embedded Google Maps are used used per Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service.

Image permissions are indicated in captions, and include links to relevant Creative Commons licenses.


 
Author Works


Denise Meeks, dmeeks@arizona.edu