Episode 50: Comparative Water Politics
“Arizona is a good example of showing how it does pay to store water when it is available for times when it is not—we’ve done that in a major way through the Arizona Water Banking Authority to store Colorado River Water when it has been available.”
A conversation with Dr. Sharon Megdal (University of Arizona) about water governance in AZ and CA, recharge, transboundary aquifers, and science diplomacy. Released April 28, 2023.
guests on the show
Sharon Megdal
Sharon B. Megdal, Ph.D. is Director of The University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center (WRRC), a Cooperative Extension center and a research unit in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Other primary titles are Professor and Specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, C.W. & Modene Neely Endowed Professor, and Distinguished Outreach Professor.
Sharon Megdal aims to bridge the academic, practitioner, and civil society communities through water policy and management research, education, and engagement programs. The geographic scope of Dr. Megdal’s work ranges from local to international. Applied research projects include analysis of water management, policy, and governance in water-scarce regions, groundwater recharge, and transboundary aquifer assessment. Key engagement initiatives are Indigenous Water Dialogues and Diversifying Voices in Water Resources.
She is the lead editor of the book, Shared Borders, Shared Waters: Israeli-Palestinian and Colorado River Basin Water Challenges and she has guest edited several special journal issues. Dr. Megdal teaches the multi-disciplinary graduate course “Water Policy in Arizona and Semi-arid Regions”. In 2020, she was awarded the Warren A. Hall Medal for lifetime achievement in water resources research and education by the Universities Council on Water Resources.
Sharon Megdal serves as on the Board of Governors for the Kasser Joint Institute for Food, Water, and Energy Security, is an ex officio member of the Leadership Team for the Colorado River Basin Water & Tribes Initiative, and is a member of the University of Arizona Presidential Advisory Commission on the Future of Agriculture and Food Production in a Drying Climate. Recent professional service includes serving for 12 years as a popularly elected Director for the Central Arizona Project, the Board of Directors for the American Water Resources Association, and Board President for the International Arid Lands Consortium. Dr. Megdal has served on numerous Arizona boards and commissions, including the Arizona Corporation Commission, the State Transportation Board, and the Arizona Medical Board. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. Dr. Megdal’s full CV, along with her policy columns and Reflections essays, can be found here.
TRANSCRIPT
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk. For today's episode, we are so excited to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center, which is actually a sister center to our own California Institute for Water Resources. Sharon is also a professor and specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, as well as the C.W. and Modene Neely Endowed Professor, and Distinguished Outreach Professor.
She aims to bridge the academic, practitioner and civil society communities through water policy and management research, education, and engagement programs. The geographic scope of Dr. Megdal's work ranges from local to international on issues ranging from water management, policy, and governance in water scarce regions, to groundwater recharge, and transboundary aquifer assessment.
We are so excited to have Sharon here. This is a cool guest, because of just how many spaces she has expertise in and that we have all kind of interacted and touched Sharon in different ways. We've all worked with her in different ways and have different experiences of her. And she's such an amazing person. And I'm really excited because she's a really fun character too. And yeah, Faith, Sam do you want to share any experiences or interactions you've had with Sharon and her work?
Faith Kearns
Yeah, so I first met Sharon when I started working for the Water Institute and we were at a National Institute for Water Resources meeting a decade ago or so. And I will say in a very heavily male dominated space. Sharon was, at the time, the President of what we call MIWAR. And so, it was really fantastic to meet her and have someone in such a strong leadership position. Over time getting to know Sharon, it doesn't at all surprise me that she was in that kind of leadership position, as I now know her as someone who is a leader in lots and lots of different spaces, as you've said, Mallika. So, I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with her today.
Mallika Nocco
What I really like about seeing Sharon in those leadership spaces in the water world as oftentimes one of the only women is she shows you how to do it too. Here's a leader who is a woman who is also a badass and knows so much. And I just really like her style of leadership and the way that she interacts with people. She's wonderful at inviting people in, inviting young women in, and then also I've seen her very expertly move things away from certain topics that aren't productive, and kind of shift the energy of a room and I really appreciate that about her.
Sam Sandoval
Actually, as part of the Permanent Forum of Binational Waters Community of Practice that Rosario Sanchez and I and others have put together, Sharon has been a key person we lean to ask for some guidance at moments. She has always been a good support of this Community of Practice group. And I also like that she always tries to bring these key comments, or to the point, comments. For some people, it might be difficult to tiptoe into some of those, but she really goes at them and talks to them openly. So, I'm really looking forward to talking to her.
Mallika Nocco
The other thing to note is that we are virtually traveling to Arizona today. And though Sharon's expertise is global and includes California- I've learned so much about California from Sharon- she has kind of a unique perspective, just because she knows so much about water management in semi-arid and arid regions.
Sam Sandoval
I do think that it's also good to think of water in California in general in the United States, from a perspective that comes from outside of California. Sometimes we get this kind of very narrow vision about some of the things that are happening here. And it's good to also bring someone that is related, but not so closely related, with water in California that can bring a fresh look at what we're doing.
Faith Kearns
Well and certainly when it comes to the Colorado River, the fate of California and Arizona are extremely intertwined. And so, I think it's really, really important to be talking to folks like Sharon, who you know, is both very charismatic, as you said Mallika, and a no nonsense leader, but also just has such a depth of expertise over a long career on these really critical issues.
Mallika Nocco
Well, I'm so excited to have Sharon on the podcast with us. Let's talk to Sharon.
Welcome to Water Talk, Sharon. We're so excited to have you here.
Sharon Megdal
Well, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
Mallika Nocco
So, we have so many things that we want to talk with you about. And before we kind of get into it, we just want to start by hearing a little bit more about your work and your career path. So how did you get started working on water?
Sharon Megdal
Well, that's a really interesting question, because my pathway to working on water is quite different from many, particularly those in academia. So, I grew up in New Jersey, by the way, and I always like to, with my students, and audiences, get a sense of where they're from, because that tells you something about the mindset of somebody. Did they grow up in a water scarce region? Or water rich region? And I went to higher education all in New Jersey. I did my undergraduate at Rutgers in economics.
And I did my PhD in Economics at Princeton University. And it wasn't like UC Davis, where you have resource economics and agricultural economics. It was kind of straight macroeconomics, microeconomics, and econometrics. Environmental economics was just at its start as a subfield. And I tell the story that in graduate school, probably the only time I mentioned the word water was to drink it. It's not what I focused on.
Instead, I focused on the economics of government tax and expenditure policy and econometrics, which is the kind of mathematical statistical modeling subfield of economics. And I moved to Arizona, and I was in the economics department. And again, I wasn't doing anything relating to water, except serendipity–life changes happen. And I was appointed by then Governor Bruce Babbitt to Arizona's Utility Regulatory Body. In California, it's called the Public Utility Commission, I think. And that's where I got my first exposure to water resources, because we regulated privately owned water companies. Twists and turns and other things. And I'm not going to tell you the whole story, because we'd spend the whole interview on that.
I became the director of a regional water augmentation district. And the reason I was invited to apply for that position was because they wanted someone who understood not just the engineering of water, which I really wasn't an engineer, but instead, kind of how to work with the people and figure out how to plan augmentation projects, put together a plan. And so, I really got my feet wet- and I'm saying that deliberately in water- through the very practical. Through heading up a Regional District, dealing with legislative issues relating to our water, our authorities and how we operated.
And it was after being away from academia for 15, almost 16 years, that I was actually recruited to come back to the University of Arizona, at the Water Resources Research Center, first as Associate Director, and then soon after that, director. And so, I really got my feet wet and got immersed in water from the practical side. And then I came back to academia as an extension specialist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, very different from where I started. And that's why I do the kind of work I do, which is bridging the academic and the real world of water management. And what's really driven me as a professional, and it took me quite a few years to figure this out, is really policy. I'm kind of a policy wonk.
And in the early years, it was how do states support school districts in their state–public expenditures. And then it became, how do you set utility rates? And now it's kind of how do you set water rates? How do you manage water resources? And so, I'm applying my trait of being an applied microeconomist to water in a way very different than I ever expected. Doing work that's very different from what I would have expected to do I often say economists may chuckle at this. I don't write in Greek letters anymore because that's what economists do when they get PhDs and they're in academia. So, it really is a somewhat circuitous path that I took that I never could have imagined I would follow coming out of graduate school, going into graduate school, even in my early years.
Faith Kearns
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that, Sharon. I also took a very winding in and out of academia- practitioner path. And I'm very keen on understanding this work through practice. So, I really appreciate hearing that about your story. So, you spent some time as the popularly elected director for the Central Arizona Project, something that is coming up more and more, and I think is great for people to hear more about. So, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your role as the director and what you're most proud of accomplishing there, and maybe what you wish you'd been able to accomplish?
Sharon Megdal
Well, let me tell you a little bit about the Central Arizona Project. So, the Central Arizona Project is a 336-mile constructed canal that pushes water uphill from the Colorado River near Lake Havasu in Arizona, up to Phoenix and then further up to Tucson. It's a concrete line canal and California is very familiar with large, constructed projects. And it was established to deliver part of Arizona's allotment of Colorado River water into central Arizona. And it's governed by a 15-person board of directors. And they come from the three counties in the service area of the Central Arizona Project, which are Maricopa County home of Phoenix, which is the fifth largest city in the United States, and Pinal County in between the Maricopa County and Pima County, where Tucson is, which is where I live. Pinal County is mostly an agricultural county, and then Pima County where the University of Arizona and Tucson are.
And the board members are elected countywide. And I ran for two terms for the CAP board representing Pima County. The terms are six years. It's an unpaid board position. So, the board is 15 persons. There's a general manager, our job is to hire and oversee the general manager and the policy. And here's where the utility experience comes in: we set the water rates, and we set taxes; the board has some taxing authority. And it's a very important board because it's a large water project.
And it's providing wholesale water supply to cities, to tribes, to industries and to agriculture. And it has had to deal over the years with many issues, including during my 12 years issues like, what to do about Navajo Generating Station, which the Central Arizona Project did not own any of, but it was providing over 90% of the power used to push the water, with the Federal Bureau of Reclamation owning that part of the plant. And first it was trying to keep it open. And then it was well it's going to be shut down because of things changing. And so that energy-water-nexus was really very important during part of my term.
And then what's in the news every day, including the day we're doing this interview is: what about the shortage conditions on the Colorado River? And so, for allocation, what are the implications? And how do we address things in light of shortage conditions and competition for water resources? And in particular, in Arizona, one of the responsibilities of the Central Arizona Project–and this may be unique across the country–is to operate this Groundwater Replenishment District that facilitates growth in the central part of the state. And I bring that up because that's a thorny issue for the Central Arizona Project Board. And for the entire 12 years I was on the board, I was on the committee that oversaw the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District. And for five years, my last five years I was chair of that committee.
So, to your question about what am I proud of, or what do I feel good about? I really feel like I contributed regularly to good decision making and good debates. A lot of our votes were not contested votes, but a lot of discussion would go into the votes of the debate before the vote, regardless if it came out unanimous or not. And we had issues where I was not on the prevailing side, you just have to vote with what you think is right.
And so, I think it was, first of all, very gratifying to do that kind of public service. It was also a great way for me to keep on top of things. Over the years, I've done a lot of public service, a lot of board service, and I always look for things where I can contribute, but also, I can learn. And serving on the CAP Board was a great opportunity to learn, to keep up to date, to get additional insights into some of the challenges, the relationships that can sometimes get strained. So, I feel like I was an active member of the board, I contributed in many ways. When I was a board officer, that meant I went back to DC, and we met with congressional delegations, and so forth.
So that one was very positive, I did decide not to run for a third term, because I thought 12 years is quite a lot. I wasn't sure I was up for another six years. So, I didn't run back in 2020. That's when my term ended. As far as let's say unresolved business, the challenges just continue. And in a way, I wish I could kind of be in the middle of it again, instead of watching from the sidelines.
But on the other hand, you make decisions. And that's all fine and good. They're great people now on the board, taking care of it. Some of those issues related to that groundwater replenishment function that I mentioned, that are really thorny, really tough. And they're not only for the board itself to resolve, that function is legislatively approved. And it really involves legislative input. And I wish we could have had a more robust discussion about what to do and the pathways to resolving some of the issues.
And some of the issues are that the membership is open, as long as you pay your dues. And so, this entity keeps getting more and more replenishment obligation, yet the water to perform the replenishment may be harder and harder to obtain. And so, there's a challenge in kind of what water sources will be used to meet the replenishment obligation, what was the cost of that be? And then also in the actual performance- the functioning of the entity- the entity either acquires storage credits already accrued, and then extinguishes them, kind of retires them to meet the replenishment obligation, or they got to find water to perform the replenishment obligation.
And what this is all about is Arizona groundwater laws say you can't keep growing on overdrafted or mined groundwater. And so, if you're going to rely on pumped groundwater, it needs to be replenished. And how it's replenished and where it's replenished, there are some issues relating to that that still need to be worked out. And those issues still remain unresolved.
Mallika Nocco
But you know that actually kind of leads really nicely into our next question. It seems to me like California could potentially have a lot to learn from Arizona in terms of the logistics of this thing, right? Because what you're calling replenishment, we could call it recharge, right?
Sharon Megdal
Yeah.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah. Right. So, we're using very particular terms in California. We're saying, "managed aquifer recharge", but managed aquifer recharge, what we're calling that in California, is happening all over the world. It's been happening for a long time all over the world. And it's happening in Arizona, in the name of this replenishment that you've described.
And it sounds to me like what you're describing as the system of crediting, and how to logistically figure that out with agriculture is maybe more further along and worked out than where we currently are here. It goes by so many names. And as someone who spent time in multiple places, Arizona, internationally, that are doing some form of intentional recharge or replenishment, you know, what do you think that we can learn in California and from some of these other implementations?
Sharon Megdal
That's a great question, and you're absolutely right that people use different words, sometimes for the same things. And then sometimes, there may be nuance to the wording use. So, for example, and I might start to sound a bit professorial here, and I'm not going to go into a 50-minute lecture on managed aquifer recharge in Arizona, but Arizona has had a statutory framework for storage and recovery, or recharge and recovery, for many years.
It started out in the mid 80s, got redone in the 1990s, 1994 to be exact. And so, we've had this regulatory statutory framework carried out through the Arizona Department of Water Resources for permitting storage facilities, the storage of water itself, and the recovery of that water and the accounting for the storage. So, it's been a very well defined, good system. I've written about that. And that's some of what I do, is I try to look at what's going on in water management, and help people understand what the management framework is attempting to do, where there might be room for improvement, and how it could be extended to other situations.
So, when I earlier used the term replenishment, that's a very specific function that depends upon the recharge framework. It's where you're replenishing groundwater that's been used by members of a replenishment district. And you use the recharge statutes. So, you might recharge the water in advance, get a credit, hold on to that credit until somebody comes to you and says, oh, I need replenishment, you need to do the replenishment. So, replenishment has a very special connotation. Managed aquifer recharge, it's really interesting. Arizona doesn't use that terminology.
I mean, that's terminology recognized across the whole world. And yet, we call it recharge, or we call it aquifer storage. And then it even gets more interesting than that, because I've argued that with all the attention in California on AgMAR, agricultural managed aquifer recharge. We've been doing AgMAR in Arizona for many years now. I mean, 25 years or more. I mean, actually, I was involved in a project when I headed up the regional augmentation district back in 1993. That was an agricultural recharge project. So, we're going on 30 years. We call it groundwater savings. We don't call that AgMAR. And even now with California's FloodMAR, again, that's a particular kind of instance, or application of managed aquifer recharge.
And so, what I would say, regarding California, you know, we all learn from each other. And that's one of my big tenets of what I do professionally is sharing lessons learned both positive and negative. Right? So, what's worked? What hasn't worked? So, I think we learn from each other as states. Clearly California looked at what Arizona did in groundwater management, when it adopted SGMA, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Clearly, you didn't want to include some of our weaker parts of that. And we do have some weaker parts of that, but look to some of the stronger parts. And I think we have the opportunity to watch what California is doing. It's still being implemented, as you all know, and see, okay, what's worked and is California able to accomplish its groundwater objectives?
I think from Arizona's point of view, a couple of important lessons have come through and one is having a strong regulatory framework, a strong permitting framework, and a strong accounting framework. So, people know what goes in, what counts, what doesn't count and what could come out. I think that's an important lesson learned from Arizona. I also think that Arizona is a good example of showing how it does pay to store water when it's available for times when it's not.
And we've done that in a major way thanks to the Arizona Water Banking Authority, which was established in 1995, to store Colorado River water when it was available. We weren't able to use so much of it at that time. I wish we were in that position now but we're not. And we stored it for the future in the aquifers. And that's really served us well. That's been maybe a 10 year, or more than 10 years, store now, recover later. But it's very similar to recognizing that you have floodwater, you want to store it, you want to have it available for when you use it at a different point in time.
Faith Kearns
Sharon, when I'm hearing you talk I you know, I want to ask a probably naive question, which is a little bit about this concept of "wet water". And so, when you're talking about replenishment and sort of a system of accounting and credits, in my mind, now I'm starting to get very confused about physical water. And then also you know, when you're calling something a "water bank", does that lead directly into sort of a water market? It's just the way that all of these things are starting to get kind of mixed up for me as we talk about this. Could you clarify?
Sharon Megdal
You know, it is really important to ask questions about what this mechanism does and not just let yourself make inferences based on the words used. And so, dealing with the distinction between paper water and wet water, that's a huge issue for us in Arizona because we allow for accounting on what we call an active management area basis. In Arizona, we've been doing groundwater management on the basis of legislatively designated active management areas, AMA's. Some of them are quite large. And so, we have the Phoenix AMA, and it covers the city of Phoenix, an actually very large aquifer with some sub basins within the aquifer.
And a lot of the accounting is done on an AMA basis. So, if you store in that AMA, you are unable to recover in the AMA. But you have localized areas of pumping. And sometimes you have pumping going on in an area where there isn't any of the recharge going on. And so, you're doing almost like a mass balance. Like you're doing an overall mass balance of what's going in and what's coming out, but that doesn't mean there aren't holes or pockets where the water is getting drawn down. And it's getting built up somewhere else.
And so that is one of the things we've recognized in Arizona, we call it the disconnect between the recharge and the pumping. And it's very hard once you've got rules in place to then change the rules of engagement, because then you usually have some people who make plans based on the old rules, and there are losers and all that, so that gets difficult. So, we do have issues of there being recharged in a place other than where the pumping is going. And we have areas of localized drawdown as a result. We have other good examples where the withdrawals are where the recharge is going, and things are much more in balance. But this question of what water and paper water, that's a very important one.
The other question, what do we mean when we say we have an Arizona Water Banking Authority? What does that do? And you might think it's like a bank where you go, you borrow money, you pay interest on the money you borrow. And that's not how the Arizona Water Banking Authority operates. It's not what it was created to do. And what it was created to do was store water for future times of shortage or outage of the Central Arizona Project now, meaning there would not be surface water delivered to Central Arizona, and then also for firming Indian water settlements.
And in Arizona, where we have 22 tribes located in Arizona, we've had a number of tribes that have had water settlements. In many cases, those water settlements are dependent upon some water delivery through the Central Arizona Project. And that cannot always be guaranteed. And so, there's what's called firming going on to kind of bolster those supplies through storage to be recovered in times when the deliveries are not made. And so, it's that sort of activity as opposed to a market mechanism where, "Hey, we've created a bank, now you can go and buy some of those credits".
Now, interestingly, Arizona, just this last legislative session, reformed its Water Infrastructure Finance Authority. And it has some funds and authorities now to augment water supplies. And how it's going to sell those and what it's going to do remains unknown to me, I'm not on that board and I've not been able to follow the details of it. It only started meeting since late 2022. But we do not have a lot in Arizona in the way of market mechanisms. We do have some.
And so, it's very fair and appropriate for people to stop and say, "Hey, tell me a bit more about that. What do you mean by that? Is it a bank? Or is it something else?" I think it's very appropriate that we need to stop and remember we're speaking to people who are not water experts. And doing so all the time. And a lot of what I tried to do is improve water literacy. And so, it's always important to take time and try to explain concepts.
Sam Sandoval
And Sharon, something that you're mentioning that I think is good to put in perspective for our listeners is the different strategies that Arizona has already been implementing for a long time. That sometimes in California, we're thinking we're inventing the wheel, but the reality is that it has been for a long time. Also, I think because of the natural conditions, and also political conditions, thinking far ahead in the future. While here we are just kind of being reactive.
Some of the water banks or the intentional storing of water from the Colorado aqueduct into the future, it really shows how proactive Arizona has been. When speaking of the Colorado, the Colorado doesn't end in San Luis Río Colorado, right? It doesn't end right at the border. It really goes further beyond, and you've been a great champion on the trans boundary groundwater conversations between Mexico and the United States. So, can you share with us and with our audience, about the trans boundary work that you have done between Mexico and the United States and some of these comparative assessment frameworks that you have implemented?
Sharon Megdal
One of my great pleasures over the last decade plus has been working on water. And groundwater in particular at the US Mexico border. The trans boundary aquifer assessment program, has been a cooperative effort between the United States and Mexico, doing assessments of aquifers shared by the two countries, and starting out with those for which there are sizable populations, depending on those aquifers, and or economic activities, depending on those aquifers. And usually those go hand in hand, but having important economic or ecological activities going on isn't always associated with large populations.
And this work, has been done in collaboration with the US Geological Survey, with other universities along the border, particularly New Mexico State University and Texas A&M, California opted out of the transboundary aquifer assessment program back in 2006, when it was under consideration, because of many reasons, including the lining of the old American Canal was pending at the time, and there were concerns that talk about groundwater studies, you know, maybe that's not such a good idea. Anyway, California opted out. So, California is the missing link of the four US states that share the border with Mexico.
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much, Sharon. Just switching gears, a little bit, we want to ask you more about your international work as well, which isn't always a part of an extension program. But you edited a collection called, 'Shared Borders, Shared Waters: Israeli Palestinian and Colorado River Basin Water Challenges', Which was focused on the sort of semi-arid and arid systems and how science diplomacy can play a role in resolving these difficult, contentious water issues. So, could you talk to us a little bit more about what we might be able to take away from the Israeli Palestinian system and sort of what you mean by science diplomacy in this context?
Sharon Megdal
It's interesting to characterize international work. How does that relate to being an extension specialist for the state of Arizona? I can explain that very well. And without any difficulty whatsoever, because all of my international work is taking the experiences and the practices and the learnings here in Arizona, and sharing those with others who want to learn about our systems. So, if people are very interested in what's going on with the Colorado River, if people are very interested in what's going on with hearing about and learning about aquifer recharge, in water banking in Arizona, in what's going on with groundwater management, or lack thereof, in the state. My international work is always connected to my work here in Arizona. And so, it's again, establishing connections and relationships.
I've learned about practices in Israel, I've met people in Israel, I can then introduce them back to people here. And they can then follow up and implement solutions, like drip irrigation pilots and other things like that. But to the point of that book, that book emanated from a workshop. And what gave me the idea for the workshop? My impression had been that there's been a lot of cross work across the Middle East in Arizona, in particular, on irrigation methods, water engineering, and so forth. But what I didn't see was much cross pollination, cross fertilization on issues relating to policy and management. And so, when I had gone over there and spoken at a conference and was working on some joint proposals (which never got funded the joint proposals for research) there was all this opportunity to learn from each other on policy and management. So, I worked hard with some collaborators and got some NSF funding and funding from a bi National Science Foundation to do a workshop. And then a few years later, we issued this book. And there again, it was all about semi-arid to arid areas, water scarcity, reliance on that water for farming and food production, and growing economies, and some degrading environmental assets.
And so, the key thing was, what can we learn from each other in terms of these different conservation, regulatory, and so forth? And so, bringing it forward, you know, California, your governor, I'm not sure which Governor it was, signed an agreement with Netanyahu, and you've had meetings and so forth. But what you need to understand, when one needs to understand, is that the regulatory regimes of the two geographies are very, very different. They're totally centralized in Israel. We're decentralized here in the United States. And so again, my work can help make connections, bring together panels, bring together people. And often these are not just one-time things. They're not like you're one and done, where you've had an experience, but then there's follow up.
Just two weeks ago or so, a CEO of a drainage authority down in the south of Israel, hyper arid, they deal with major problems of flash flooding. And the CEO was going to be in California for some meetings and said, "I want to come over to Arizona," I gave him some names of some of the flood control district people here in Pima County, he met with them, spent a few hours with me, I took them out to a wetlands and recharge site. And for him, it was extremely valuable. And so, this is what I'm doing and what I'm able to do. And the hard work of it is trying to keep up to date. The real hard work of it is things are changing, just like they're changing for us here in California and Arizona. They're changing everywhere. And so, it's like, oh, with COVID, I hadn't gotten over to Israel for a while, I need to get over there. And I was there in October, and I met with people to kind of ask questions about what was going on. Same thing with Jordan. I've been to Jordan many times. But I haven't been there now for four years.
And so, with the science part, so to the question about science diplomacy, coming from a university, we do have the ability to bring research to bring deliberation of the academic type to the forefront of this. And it's got to be part of the foundation, but you always have to recognize and have respect for all the people who are making the decisions. And that's where I feel like through my CAP board activities, through the transboundary aquifer assessment program, I've done a bit of diplomacy myself. I've helped get the commissioners of the International Boundary and Water Commission in 2016 over to Israel Palestinian territories in Jordan. I helped facilitate some involvement of some tribal leaders in the UN water conference a few weeks ago. So, sometimes I describe myself as a busy body but not apologizing for it.
Sam Sandoval
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Because in many parts of our careers, sometimes we are struggling with that specific moral compass. So, we always like to finish our episodes asking you if there is anything else that you want to share with our audience and how can we support the work that you're doing?
Sharon Megdal
Well, I think we've talked about a lot here. So, I don't know that I have any other little stories to tell. I'm sure I could think of some, and this has been great. I mean, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. I think about supporting each other's efforts. I think in general, we do have to think about how we can help each other do more of our good work in a way that's manageable and doable for us. And I'll go back to kind of what I alluded to earlier: there are just so many days in the week and hours per day, I work really, really hard. And there are often a lot of desires to have me or have the Water Center help with something. But my staff is very, very small. You don't have a large staff there.
So, we need resources, we need resources to be able to carry out our work, I sometimes say I need Sharon extenders. Giving me some money to supervise a grad student, sometimes it is great, but give it to me for three years so I can actually support a grad student through a program or give it to me to hire at least 0.5 staff person, if not more. Because one person can't manage everything and can't do everything. And so, I think the way we could support each other is to think about ways to collaborate that truly expands our ability to do work. That would be wonderful. If I had the wish list, it's like okay, let's figure it out.