(Photo by Garrison Murphy/Cronkite News) NOGALES — Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, share something more meaningful than their city name.
“We know that Arizona wouldn’t be Arizona without water, probably our most precious resource,” said Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan.
“People don’t realize that things are grown in other countries.” Border towns commonly share water resources.
Politicians from both sides of the border said they acknowledge that most of the issues related to water have originated on the Mexican side of the river.
We are working on that.” Pompa said that local, state, and federal governments in Mexico are cooperating to create a first of its kind solar water treatment plant in Sonora.
Pompa also said that federal governments on both sides are to blame for most of the issues pertaining to water in that “Washington and Mexico City don’t understand the border because they aren’t on the border.” Echoing Pompa, Sklar also said she hopes federal politicians minimize interference with water around the border.
He said factories in Sonora dump toxic waste into shared waterways.
“What we want to see is that (the Sonoran government is) more on top of things and that the revelations don’t just come from this side,” Doyle said.
Under the NAFTA agreement, their waste is to be treated by American waste water plants.
“The goal is to educate them and say don’t do it this way, and if you have waste that you need to dispose of, you need to know who to call,” Anaya said.

The Nogales Unified School District is participating in a voluntary water testing program offered through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality after district-sponsored water testing last August and September turned up excessive levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School.
“Now this program through ADEQ is funding a water-screening program to test the drinking water at schools statewide, and as I mentioned, we are participating to test the drinking water at all of our schools once again.” ADEQ began offering water testing at Arizona public schools in January in response to nationwide concerns about the safety of drinking water for children.
The program is designed to identify any school drinking water with lead levels that could pose harm to students’ health so districts can address those issues.
The program, which provides water testing kits to schools at no cost, has identified elevated levels of lead at 24 of 118 schools tested to date, or one in five, according to a spreadsheet updated weekly on the ADEQ website.
Though NUSD already conducted tests of schools water sources independently within the last six months, the district is taking advantage of the opportunity to again analyze the safety of its water with multiple samples at each school in the coming weeks, Parra said.
Abundant caution When initial results from water testing conducted by the district last year showed elevated levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School, the district immediately covered drinking fountains at the school and began providing bottled water for students and staff.
Even so, the district is continuing to provide filtered and bottled water at Desert Shadows in what Parra called “an abundance of caution.” Working with the Arizona School Facilities Board (ASFB) and Dominion Environmental Consultants, NUSD determined that hot water heaters were the likely cause of the problem.
Parra added that the district is also working with ASFB to replace water heaters at all 10 district schools, starting with Bracker Elementary School.
“We have a very smooth system in place,” said Desert Shadows Principal Joan Molera, who added that to cut down on the expense of disposable cups, she also asked the County Superintendent of Schools’ Office to provide each student with a reusable water bottle.
“I think it’s always important when we’re dealing with children, and educators also, to be on the cautionary side,” she said.

WHITE MOUNTAINS — Only a small portion of the state in the Verde River watershed is still listed in drought by the Arizona Department of Water Resources as of Dec. 31, 2016.
Heavy snow on the Colorado Plateau has led to the removal of moderate drought across Navajo and Apache counties, and even the southwest has seen improvements with an area of severe drought upgraded to moderate drought across most of Yuma County.
Forty-four percent of the state is out of drought and 0.61 percent is in moderate drought.
To help put it into perspective, Lyman Lake near St. Johns in Apache County was at low levels for the last several years.
Show Low Creek is flowing at 123 percent (36 cubic feet per second) its average in about five years.
And just because the White Mountains get a lot of rain and snow, in comparison to other parts, does not mean people do not need to conserve water.
Average snowpack in the Central Mogollon Rim, Little Colorado-Southern Headwaters and Upper Salt River Basin areas that supply much of the southern part of the state with water are running at 85 percent of average, 89 percent of average, and 62 percent of average respectively.
Clearly, NOAA officials are playing it careful with predictions about the drought until they have a better idea of what is coming this year and years to come.
"Runoff in the White Mountains was not as good as it could have been this year," he said.
Newlin also said climate change is a factor and will be in years to come.