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Arizona's Santa Cruz River is currently imperiled. Stretching for 180 miles through major cities like Tucson and into the Sonoran desert, the Santa Cruz River is in danger of drying up because of human factors like climate change and irresponsible wastewater disposal. Yet even though sewage is not the stuff of romance and legend, the same gross stuff that has helped imperil the Santa Cruz River may help save it.

Wastewater is filled with human feces, garbage and other gross gunk that carries dangerous disease, and is piped away from our civilization for that reason. Yet according to a recent study in the journal Restoration Ecology, effluent — or sewage that has been dumped into a body of water, like a river or ocean — can be used to help the environment, at least if used strategically.

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Just add sewage: How a bone-dry river bed became a thriving haven for desert wildlife | Salon.com

Cedar City gained over $2 million in grant funds to begin a wastewater project that could give the city another water source for turf irrigation at schools, parks and the golf course.

The grant allows the project to begin Phase 1, funding the construction of a Type 1 effluent filtration system at the Cedar City Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility. Effluent water is wastewater. The new system would allow the plant to improve the water produced from Type 2 to Type 1 by using pile cloth disc filters. So, it would be considered safe for human contact and can be used for irrigation at the Cedar Ridge Golf Course and local parks and schools, according to the City Council packet. The water is currently being discharged onto farmland near the plant.

'Small piece of the pie': Cedar City gains over $2M in grant funds for wastewater project | News | stgeorgeutah.com

Water scarcity could threaten the Midwest as climate change puts pressure on water systems. With that scarcity, legal fights over water could become more common.

Where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet north of St. Louis, the powerful waterways form a line in the middle of their flows, at first refusing to mix together in their new union.

As it cuts across the state on its way to meet the Mississippi, the Missouri River irrigates crops, cools the systems at nuclear and coal power plants and quenches millions of Missourians’ thirst as the largest source of drinking water in the state.

Climate change could bring more water fights to Midwest | KCUR - Kansas City news and NPR