Arroyo 2013

Abstract

The Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) has just released its 2013 annual Arroyo – a 12-page newsletter devoted to a single topic of timely interest to Arizona. This year, the topic is “Contaminants of Emerging Concern in Water,” a subject that has raised questions from the public and challenged water managers and regulators across the country. Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) are “substances we use every day for all kinds of purposes, which get flushed, washed or otherwise discarded and end up in water and soil.” They are being detected in trace amounts in the water supply, raising the need to know what risks they represent and what, if anything, should be done about them. The new Arroyo brings together current information and presents definitions, examples and study results, while describing efforts to tackle the issue. The WRRC publishes Arroyo each spring, and initial research is carried out the previous summer by the winner of the Montgomery & Associates Summer Writing Internship. The 2012 intern was Madhumitha Raghav, a Ph.D. student in Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona.