Unlike many other communities in Arizona, the City of Peoria has groundwater bodies within its borders and adjacent. Lake Pleasant is a recreational asset to the North Valley, and both the Agua Fria and New River flow through the city. Peoria’s primary water sources, Central Arizona Project (CAP) and Salt River Project (SRP) water are delivered via a long canal network that channels the water across hundreds of miles to serve the entire Phoenix Metro Area. Peoria’s other primary water sources are groundwater and reclaimed water. While Peoria’s water future is secure under normal circumstances, the state is in a sustained two-decade-long drought, and climate change threatens to increase drought severity in the future. As a leader in the realm of sustainable water management and conservation practices, Peoria staff and leadership seek to take action today in order to prevent more serious consequences in the future.
The City of Peoria created a Water Conservation and Shortage Response Plan (Drought Management Plan) in 2017 to mitigate water challenges and prepare for the possibility of more prolonged and persistent drought scenarios. Peoria’s plan uses a tiered system linked to the water level at Lake Meade, which feeds the CAP system. Education and outreach are central to the plan, and the city will need to use different kinds of messaging in the different stages of the plan, but water conservation is complex, and the direct impacts of residential water use are not immediately felt by the people who use it. Therefore, communication needs to be strategic and on-message for the city to effectively inform the public about conservation needs and practices while also motivating compliance through reasoning, incentives, and appeals to common goals.
Through Peoria’s partnership with ASU Project Cities, students from the New College’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences engaged with city staff to develop messaging strategies and sample content for the Drought Management Plan. Students split into 6 teams, each given the same task: to develop a messaging campaign that would educate residents about water conservation and change residents’ usage patterns. Effective strategies for water conservation messaging allow for continued growth, expansion of ecotourism opportunities, and resilient communities. Recommendations were informed by academic research, literature reviews, and comparative analysis of communication strategies in other states.