Tucson Water has reduced by 90% the amount of water Tucson gets from groundwater pumping. Wow. They reclaim water in increasing amounts and use Lake Havasu water via the Central Arizona Project. Plus, consumption has dropped. Tucson, which is in a desert and gets baking hot in the summer, shows other cities that is really is possible to reduce water pumping from aquifers.
What is being shown is the total amount of water produced by the utility and provided to its customers. This is then broken down into the different types of water that are produced: groundwater, CAP water, and reclaimed water. The main purpose of the chart is to show that the proportion of our water that is coming from groundwater is way down since the beginning of the 21st century.
The Central Arizona Project is designed to bring about 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year to Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties. CAP carries water from Lake Havasu near Parker to the southern boundary of the San Xavier Indian Reservation southwest of Tucson. It is a 336-mile long system of aqueducts, tunnels, pumping plants and pipelines and is the largest single resource of renewable water supplies in the state of Arizona.