Ag + Urban: A Shared Commitment to Water Stewardship by Marwan Khalifa Jun 27, 2025 Voices on Water ACWA quietly turned 115 years old on May 28, providing an opportunity to both look back and think ahead. And with ACWA, agriculture features prominently in either direction. Our association’s history is rooted in agriculture. Legislation during the late 1800s allowed the formation of irrigation districts and became a model for the creation of nearly every other type of public water agency in California. The organization that became ACWA began as the Irrigation Districts Association of California, founded by the Alta Irrigation District, Modesto Irrigation District, Oakdale Irrigation District, South San Joaquin Irrigation District and Turlock Irrigation District. Over more than a century, our membership grew and evolved, expanding well beyond irrigation districts to include urban, suburban, and regional agencies of every type and scale. Today ACWA is the largest association of public water agencies in the United States and a world-class organization in its own right. Given the wide differences among how they function, who they serve, and where they operate, it’s easy to assume vast differences between agriculture and urban water agencies. But despite that fact, we’ve always committed ourselves to collaboration. And today, we stand together, solving problems and advancing stewardship of California’s most precious resource. Both agriculture and urban communities encounter common challenges, ranging from water rights issues to the vulnerabilities of rural and small water systems. For example, disadvantaged communities facing challenges in accessing safe drinking water could include a mobile home park in Los Angeles, as well as small, rural communities in the Central Valley. Preserving our water rights system, addressing regulatory challenges, reducing redundancy in water data requirements and, above all, investing in state and federal conveyance infrastructure to optimize water supplies provide additional examples of commonality in issues between the urban and agricultural water sectors. Right now, enormous pressures confront generational farmers and Central Valley communities because the infrastructure they depend on for their lifeline to water is either deteriorating from lack of investment or constrained by regulatory overreach. That is why we must remain united in our advocacy for increased infrastructure investment. That unity could just as well support vital funding that allows urban agencies to continue exploring the potential of desalination, water recycling, and stormwater capture to adapt to a changing hydrology. Whatever path we find toward answering these challenges, it is a path that will run through mutual support between urban and agricultural water suppliers. That spirit is alive and well within the ACWA community, where it is encouraging to meet so many people from a diverse mix of generations and areas of expertise. They represent the future of our water leadership — agricultural, urban, and everything in between — and together we will shape our association’s future and legacy of unity.
