Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration is ramping up its defense of the state’s position in Colorado River negotiations. And it seems the Ninth Floor believes the best defense is a good offense.
The governor’s office told the media this week that the state had retained the services of international, New York-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell ahead of possible litigation over cuts to Arizona’s allocation of Colorado River water, which makes up more than a third of the state’s overall water supply.
And last week, Hobbs used a speaking slot at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference on surface transportation funding last week to lay out a — shall we say — ballistic case for the preservation of Arizona’s share of Colorado River water.
“With the ongoing conflict in Iran and the decimation of America's missile supply, Arizona's massive aerospace and defense industry is more important than ever,” she said. “We literally build the defense systems that keep Americans and our allies safe.”
A raft of current river management agreements expire in October, and the seven states of the basin — the “Upper Basin” states of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah and the “Lower Basin” states of Arizona, Nevada and California — have so far failed to agree on a new plan to manage the river into the future amid climate change-induced “megadrought” and aridification.
In absence of a basin-wide consensus, the federal government has threatened to step in. But the possible actions it might take, as outlined in a draft environmental impact statement released this winter, would all involve significant cuts to Arizona’s supply of Colorado River water — particularly the water that comes to the state’s population centers via the Central Arizona Project.
The infamous bathtub rings of Lake Mead, showing the extent of the reservoir’s decline in recent years.
Arizona contends that, under its interpretation of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the Upper Basin states must deliver a certain amount of water — an average of roughly 80 million acre feet over ten years — to the Lower Basin through releases from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. The state says that the federal plans, which place almost the entire burden of reductions on the Lower Basin, would violate that obligation, and it’s prepared to go to court to enforce the compact.
The Upper Basin has its own problems with the federal plans, but on this issue, it argues that the compact doesn’t actually obligate the Upper Basin to deliver the water, just to not deplete the water.
And in the Upper Basin, which has historically underutilized its allocation of Colorado River water, it’s climate, not consumption, that is generally dictating conditions.
In any case, the severity of the drought and the existing overallocation of the river means that Lake Powell and Lake Mead are racing toward critically low levels, and it may not be possible for the Upper Basin to meet the delivery obligation — at least as it’s understood here in Arizona — by next year, regardless of what plan the federal government pursues. It’s a recipe for litigation, either between the states or against the feds or both.
Hence the contract with Sullivan & Cromwell, which the state and firm signed in February. It’s worth up to $3 million, money that the Legislature allocated to a special litigation fund last year. Lawmakers are trying to add another $1 million this year. The state isn’t alone — the Central Arizona Project, like surely many other large users, has its own litigation budget, as does the state of Colorado.
Lawyers with Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the world’s largest and most profitable law firms, have tried water cases before the U.S. Supreme Court before. They also facilitated the merger of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI and Capital One’s acquisition of Discover. The firm advised cryptocurrency exchange FTX — founded by convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — before and during its bankruptcy proceedings. Its lawyers also represented Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York.
In other words, the Environmental Defense Fund it is not. But it does mean business.
Hobbs, meanwhile, is already trying the case in the court of public opinion. Officials from both basins have indulged in a healthy dose of op-ed writing and condemnatory speeches about their counterparts, but perhaps no governor has been more visible on the issue of water security for her state than Hobbs.
In her speech at the Chamber of Commerce event, Hobbs said the state has already taken cuts, both through intentional conservation measures and mandatory reductions as part of the Drought Contingency Plan. And it’s read to commit to more, but not without sharing the burden. Much of what she said seemed designed to get the attention of the White House, which is all in on AI-enabled military aggression.
“In our struggle against China in the AI arms race, Arizona semiconductors are the key to victory for the Western world,” she said.
The state’s reductions to its Colorado River usage under current agreements
We haven’t heard much from Trump on the river talks, but his administration does face a potentially impactful — and potentially dire — political question in determining how to distribute shortage across the basin. As some D.C. reporters have put it, Arizona and Nevada are important swing states heading into the November midterms, but Trump detests California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who seems to have some presidential ambitions. The Upper Basin includes reliably Republican Wyoming and Utah but a fraction of the congressional seats and electoral votes, even with Colorado and New Mexico.
Hobbs, of course, is a Democrat. But that didn’t stop her from telling the free marketeers at the Chamber meeting that “this administration's goals rely on Arizona receiving our fair share of Colorado River water.”
“There is no on-shoring of mission-critical supply chains or military preparedness without a secure water future for Arizona,” Hobbs continued. “This administration must step in, show leadership, and help the seven states come to a reasonable and fair agreement and ensure Arizona has the ability to defend our nation, feed our nation, and build the high-tech economy of our nation's future.”
The Trump Administration has finalized the transfer of the 2,200-acre Oak Flat site near Superior to a pair of multinational mining companies that now have the go-ahead to begin exploratory drilling, per the Arizona Republic’s Debra Utacia Krol.
The transfer is a major and potentially terminal milestone in the decades-long Oak Flat saga, which has seen activists — particularly members of the San Carlos Apache tribe, for whom the area is replete with sacred springs and ceremonial sites — attempt to block the transfer through protest action, legislative advocacy and the courts.
But despite numerous stops and starts across multiple presidencies, the Trump administration has vowed to push the transfer through, and followed through on that ambition last week after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals let an emergency injunction blocking the transfer expire. The administration and other mine supporters say mining at the site, one of the largest copper ore reserves in the country, would bring jobs to the Copper Triangle and support national military goals.
“The national security of America depends on our ability to harness the abundant natural resources we are blessed with in this country,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement following the transfer. “The Resolution Copper project is a prime example of bureaucratic and legal chokeholds preventing our rural communities, supply chains, and defense industry from producing the minerals we need right here in America.”
The companies, Rio Tinto and BHP, say they’ll steward the site for as long as possible and try to maintain access — but before long, ground subsidence will create a two-mile crater where Oak Flat once stood. Environmentalists also warn of the potential for overdrawing groundwater, polluting the aquifer and other downstream impacts. The land was previously part of Tonto National Forest.
An underlying court case is still underway, but the companies now have the green light to begin some drilling.
I wish they all could be California: The Central Arizona Project and the San Diego County Water Authority are “discussing the possibility” of CAP acquiring desalinated Pacific Ocean water to augment its supplies amid Colorado River megadrought, per Fox 10’s Steve Nielsen. These discussions are very preliminary, and follow the SDCWA’s ratification of a memorandum of understanding with water agencies in Nevada and Arizona to explore possible interstate transfers of water from a desalination plant in Carlsbad. Bringing desalinated ocean water into Arizona’s water system is definitely possible — it’s just expensive, and we’ve gotten used to water that is quite cheap.
“Honestly I think the big sticking point is price,” Kathryn Sorensen, a water policy expert at Arizona State University, told Nielsen.
About Lake Powell: Snowpack in the Colorado Basin this winter has been terrible, to an unprecedented degree in some places. Reservoir managers say that they need to conserve 1.7 million acre feet in Lake Powell this year to prevent water levels dropping too low to generate hydropower, per the Aspen Daily News’ Austin Corona, who covered the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting this week. That could mean releases from upstream storage reservoirs in New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado, something that will give Upper Basin states some heartburn if it doesn’t also come with reduced releases from Lake Powell to Lake Mead — and on to the Lower Basin.
The Nevada plan: The UCRC meeting also brought some news about Colorado River discussions, per Corona. We and other outlets have previously reported that, in absence of a basinwide consensus on long-term operating plans for the river, Nevada has proposed a short-term deal that has some buy-in from the Upper Basin. New Mexico’s negotiator, Estevan Lopez, said those talks have stalled.
“(The Upper Basin states) have some problems with some of the elements in Nevada’s proposal, so we offered a counter proposal. We have yet to have meaningful engagement on that discussion. We anticipate further meetings,” Lopez told Corona.
Show me the money: The federal government announced $889 million in water infrastructure investments across the West as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The money won’t go to any projects in Arizona at this time, but will support canal rehabilitation and diversion upgrades in California, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho, according to Construction Dive’s Sebastian Obando.
You can invest in Arizona’s water infrastructure (water journalism counts, right?) by supporting the Water Agenda.
The lonesome, crowded West: Drought is menacing ranching communities in the Malpai Borderlands of Arizona, New Mexico and the country of Mexico, as told in this beautiful feature from the Arizona Republic’s Shi En Kim.
“Four of the last five years have been the worst I've seen,” a rancher told her. “I've been doing this for 50-some years.”
On Friday, April 3, at 4 p.m. at the ASU MIX Center in downtown Mesa, art historian and researcher Chelsea Haines will present excerpts from a film she made with artist Tali Keren that “reflects on water development, desalination, and speculative infrastructure in the Arizona region and beyond,” according to the university.
The film “explores humanity’s enduring impulse to extract abundance from arid landscapes, and the hopes, tensions, and contradictions embedded in desert water futures.”
Get more information here.