Securing a reliable water supply for the border’s future without sacrificing current quality standards is becoming more difficult for many counties throughout the region.

In Arizona, population growth and future climate change forecasts make water allocation a top priority.

The predicament is that the state’s water usage continues to increase while renewable sources deplete. In the future, new sources will inevitably be needed to quench supply demands.

Where this water will come from, and how clean it will be, is causing concern.

According to Tucson Water’s 50-year water plan, effluent, or treated wastewater, is the only water supply that increases with population growth and should be more widely used in the future. Tucson Water serves more than 70,000 people in Southern Arizona.

Many residents are staunchly against a “toilet-to-tap” water supply system.

Tucson’s Proposition 200, on the November ballot, would prohibit additional uses of effluent water and limit future water connections – crippling the region's growth rates.

Currently, Tucson uses one-third of its effluent supply for mainly irrigation purposes.

“There are alternative uses for treated effluent that aren’t being fully exploited,” James Washburne, a hydrology & water resources professor at the University of Arizona, said. “It doesn’t mean we have to drink it.”

Tucson Water’s plan also states that water delivered to customers will exceed the preferred mineral level within a few years.

As groundwater supplies deplete, more Colorado River water will be used to maintain supplies and unless more costly treatment plants are built, the quality will go down.

“Unless we pay for more filtration, we are going to see more degradation of water,” Washburne said. “This is more of a concern for washing machines and air conditioners than human health.

Nearly all drinking water, including bottled water, contains contaminates.

In Nogales, Ariz., there have been efforts to maintain water quality and quell contamination concerns.

In late August 2007, Jan Brewer, acting governor, authorized an emergency declaration appropriating more than $200,000 in state funding to secure a Nogales sewage pipeline from bursting, potentially threatening groundwater supplies and nearby residents.

According to Nogales Mayor Ignacio Barraza, the pipeline carries 12-14 million gallons of raw sewage to the Nogales International Waste Water Treatment Plant in Rio Rico, Ariz.

Nogales was also fined in March 2004 by the Environmental Protection Agency for several long-standing drinking water violations; the city failed to meet EPA monitored drinking water requirements.

However, Tucson Water met all of the EPA quality requirements in 2006.