In partnership with Health for All, a newly formed Arizona NGO, Arizona Water for All has been conducting crucial research around how communities understand and perceive their water safety and quality. Working with 200 households around Nogales, where water quality has been a historical issue, we have been integrating social science on how people perceive their household water quality with an array of lab-based water quality measures of that water (such as pesticides, arsenic, and bacteria). The extent to which communities recognize and react to perceived water risks is an understudied issue globally, but crucial to designing strategies that can properly connect community concerns and capacities to planned water quality interventions. This alignment enhances the acceptability, sustainability, and effectiveness of any community water interventions.