Sarah Porter’s fondest memories of growing up in Phoenix include spending time with her family camping, hiking, and fishing.

So when Porter saw an opportunity to transition from her career as a lawyer working in complex commercial litigation to serving with the National Audubon Society, she stepped into a role that reconnected her with one of her passions. 

Her work with the Audubon Society ultimately led to her current position as director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, where she has served in this capacity since 2015.

Porter sat down with the Arizona Capitol Times to discuss her career trajectory, the state’s groundwater usage and other prominent water issues.

How did you end up in your current position as director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy?

As I was doing my demanding legal practice at a big law firm in Phoenix, I became involved with the newly formed state office of the National Audubon Society, which was working to build a nature center in south Phoenix, the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center. That project really attracted me, because I love the idea of getting more families and children to have opportunities, connections with the amazing Sonoran Desert and the amazing places of Arizona. And I saw that project as creating a gateway, especially for families that didn’t necessarily have the money to have access to nature experiences.

With Audubon, I became the deputy director to help lead that project. I was part of a team that helped make that project happen. Then I went on to become the state director, and from that position, I realized that, in the West — and especially the Intermountain West — the one thing that we could do to help protect places for birds and other wildlife, and also to protect the beautiful places that people just love so much … was to focus on rivers and wetlands … because that is the critical habitat for western wildlife. They all depend on rivers and wetlands. That is also so important to humans and what we do. That’s really where the tension is.

So, I helped gather Audubon in the Intermountain West — from Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona — to look at what could we do collectively to help people understand the trade offs and the values of protecting riparian and wetland habitats in the Intermountain West, and particularly thinking about birds and other animals that migrate.

You can protect one space somewhere way up north, but if you’re not protecting all of the spaces all along a migratory path, you’re not really helping those animals. So we were looking at, how can we just get people to understand the need to protect … this chain of important places for wildlife? That got me into western water policy. I kind of went back to my law roots. Water law is complicated in the West, and that’s because we’ve had … around 150 years to develop it. And nothing could be more important. So we’ve developed a rather complex, arcane and wonderful water law system. 

When the Kyl Center was being formed by Morrison Institute … they had a group of about maybe 30 or 40 stakeholders giving advice on forming the Kyl Center and what it would do. And I was one of the environmental NGO representatives in that stakeholder group. So then I started to think, ‘Wow, this is really what I want for my next act’ because water is infinitely fascinating.

What has surprised you the most about working in water policy?

I feel like I’m surprised every day; ‘the most’ is hard. I guess learning that everything that you can do in water policy will have ramifications for other water users in Arizona or in the West because water is scarce. That means that, for the most part, most of the rules and regulations and laws are based on very defensible reasons. If you’re new to it, you can look at it and say, ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Sometimes, you know a person may not like how water law breaks, how it works. But there are almost always very defensible reasons for a water policy in Arizona and in the West. And that is very much connected with why it gets complicated, because it’s trying to accommodate all these different needs.

In many parts of Arizona, there is virtually no natural groundwater recharge. And I think that is something people don’t appreciate. In much of Arizona, probably well over half of Arizona … the groundwater recharge is so low that it’s almost immaterial, in vast swaths of the state. That’s just a hydrological reality that it took some time for me to come to terms with.

The exception to this is the White Mountains and the Coconino aquifer in the northeast, but in most of the state, less than 2% of the water that falls on the ground in snow or rain makes its way to the aquifer.

This was another year where the state didn’t pass a groundwater management framework for rural areas. How will the lack of a framework affect some of these rural areas?

It’s the status quo, continuing with how it was. In the vulnerability of different areas, there’s a great deal of difference. We have 51 sub basins in the state, which are like misshapen, leaky bathtubs holding groundwater aquifers. And in some of those sub basins, we see a very high rate of depletion. And in some, not so high. Most of the northern half of the state is really not at risk. Let’s say the northern third. It’s in the southern parts of the state where we have more groundwater reliant agriculture — where we see more risk. And the most depleted, or rapidly depleting aquifer, currently is the Gila Bend Basin. Mostly, the economic activity that’s going on there is farming. 

So it means that those people who have farms there are going to be grappling with the costs of pumping deeper and deeper. There are other places where there are communities. In La Paz County, there are people with fairly shallow wells who probably can’t afford to dig deeper wells, and they’re finding that their groundwater table is declining. The impacts may be greater for those … there may be more people in that situation in a sub basin that isn’t (in) as much trouble. How to assess impacts is really complicated. So, it just means we have the status quo for now.

There are some interesting developments occurring up in the Prescott area. There is a group … they have an intergovernmental agreement, and they’re working at a more local and, to some extent, voluntary level, to get a grip on groundwater use. And I think we could see more of that in southeastern Arizona and Sulphur Springs. There’s a group that’s (trying) to figure out if there are ways they can work through voluntary agreement to collectively reduce their groundwater consumption.

They kind of differed, but essentially the legislation that has been contemplated … would enable local areas to decide they want groundwater regulation if they met certain conditions. The other version that made its way through the Legislature was limiting the sub basins that actually could have groundwater regulation. The framework wouldn’t be available to every sub basin in the state that met the conditions. I think there’s traction. There is some very good thinking that’s happened in the last few years that maybe a future Legislature can build on. 

What do people misunderstand about water in Arizona?

There’s a really important thing that I wish people understood. Cities don’t need much water. I mean, in context of water demand currently, cities in Arizona are responsible for maybe 20% of demand, all of the water that cities deliver, that cities and towns and any water provider. And why this is important is that, if we were looking at a water shortage or a predominantly agricultural economy, we would be looking at very expensive and I would say, arguably, very disruptive solutions. How do we move the water from a large water supply from a river, to where we want to farm? That’s historically what has been done in the U.S. It was the policy of the United States in the 19th and first part of the 20th century, because there was such a priority on settling the U.S. and feeding people. 

Now, we’re at a different time. We have different technology. We can grow more with less water. We don’t need to have that as our priority. And so when we’re looking at cities that are at risk of water supply shortages, the solutions for getting more efficient and finding water supplies to make up whatever cuts there are, the solutions are much more manageable and less disruptive than historically. A combination of … making sure that we’re being efficient with water and new water supplies from multiple sources will be sufficient. It’ll be enough water for growth, enough water for lots of economic activity and have a nice place to live.

I wanted to make sure to say that, because it’s easy to feel really, really anxious about what’s going on with water. You hear cuts to the Colorado River and groundwater. But we’ve been working on this for a long time. I would say earnestly working on this for arguably 100 years, (and) certainly since the Groundwater Management Act in 1980. We’re facing challenges, but we also have a lot of solutions out there.