Cuts to Arizona’s supply of Colorado River water proposed in recent federal planning documents are “arbitrary and capricious,” violate federal law, threaten the state’s jobs, farms, homes and security, and must be withdrawn or substantially revised.
That’s according to officials from around the state who submitted comments this weekend to the federal government as part of a larger process to develop new management guidelines for the Colorado River after current plans expire at the end of 2026.
“(The cuts) threaten to tear apart a generation of careful water management and topple the architecture that supports American semi-conductor manufacturing, AI infrastructure industries, and critical mineral and agricultural production,” Brenda Burman, the general manager of the Central Arizona Project, wrote in comments to the feds.
The federal government is poised to unilaterally implement plans to manage the river after the seven states of the basin missed a series of deadlines to reach an agreement for future river operations.
The upper (New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming) and lower divisions (Arizona, California and Nevada) of the states could not find compromise on some key sticking points — namely, whether the headwaters states in the Upper Basin should commit to cuts of their supply of the river to ensure enough water makes it downriver to support consumption in the populous Lower Basin.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of the Interior released a draft document with five possible scenarios for managing the river as part of a process required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Only one of those scenarios could be implemented without additional agreements among the states — agreements that don’t seem likely at this juncture. But any of them would result in major cuts to Colorado River supplies in the Lower Basin, particularly in Arizona, which holds low priority rights on the river.
Specifically, under the “basic coordination alternative” — the one the feds say they can implement without a deal — the Lower Basin states would shoulder the entirety of annual cuts of almost 1.5 million acre feet.
And more than 77% of those reductions would come from Arizona. Other scenarios would see even steeper cuts. And these reductions still may not be enough to stabilize the federally managed reservoirs at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, where water levels may soon drop too low for power generation and water deliveries without infrastructural challenges — all while almost wiping out the Central Arizona Project.
CAP estimates that severe cuts could cause Arizona’s economy to lose $2.7 trillion by 2060 — not to mention higher water rates for residential and commercial consumers, fallowed fields for farmers, inadequate supplies for developers, and abrogated responsibilities to the tribes, who are entitled to water under settlements with the federal government.
“These are likely to be only a fraction of the likely economic impacts that Arizona will experience under the alternatives in the Draft EIS,” comments from legislative leaders say. “Arizona will experience costs from increased groundwater pumping, aquifer depletion, land subsidence, ecosystem degradation, increased energy costs from greater pumping depths, and the investments in infrastructure required to switch from surface water to groundwater.”
The lawmakers also said that the cuts would hinder Arizona’s efforts to support America’s “Golden Age,” among other Trump administration priorities.
The signatories of the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Arizona didn’t ratify the agreement until the 1940s amid disputes with California.
Moreover, Arizona stakeholders say the federal proposals also violate existing laws governing the river, which — at least according to the Lower Basin — require the Upper Basin to deliver an average of 8.23 million acre feet of water per year to the Lower Basin states over 10 years. (The Upper Basin states would counter that the law says they only have to avoid depleting a certain amount of water, not deliver it.)
ADWR’s comment letter says the state has a right to ensure delivery of that water through a “call” under the 1922 Colorado River compact, but that the federal plans don’t consider this possibility. (In this case, a “call” likely just means litigation, which seems all-but guaranteed no matter what happens next.)
“The failure of the Draft EIS to acknowledge that the Lower Basin states can seek enforcement of the Compact should the Upper Basin fail to comply with its obligations is a fatal flaw,” ADWR said.
Team Arizona?
The legislative comment letter is signed only by Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Steve Montenegro, both Republicans.
That came as a surprise to legislative Democrats, who say they had been working with the majority caucus on comments to the feds.
Indeed, the Agenda seemed to have been notified that the comments had been submitted before even the Democrats.
“We expected to submit a comment jointly from all four caucuses because we have so far understood that we were all on the same team Arizona in fighting for our share of the Colorado River,” House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos and Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said in a statement to the Agenda. “We were told that Senate Republicans hired an attorney to draft joint comments that would be circulated to all four leaders for signatures because we are all on Team Arizona together. It appears they decided they have more pull with their friends in Washington without us because we’re only now seeing them.”
In an interview this week, Sundareshan said Democrats were asking for copies of the letter for review with the expectation their names would be attached as recently as Monday. If they had known Republican leadership would send comments without them, Democrats would have tried to submit their own comments, she said.
A spokesperson for GOP legislative leadership did not return a request for comment.
While Democratic and Republican lawmakers have found little to agree on when it comes to water legislation at the state Capitol — whether they’re debating groundwater management, environmental regulation or utility rates — they have largely presented a unified front when it comes to Colorado River talks.
When water managers, stakeholders, states, tribes and other entities on the river met in Las Vegas for the 2025 Colorado River Water Users Association conference last December, state lawmakers from both parties were there — from Republican water czar Gail Griffin to Petersen to Sundareshan. After all, there’s not much to fight about if there’s no Colorado River water to manage.
“That's why we’re here, showing that we as a Legislature take this seriously,” Yuma House Republican Tim Dunn told the Agenda during the conference. “And that we can work together.”
While Arizona Department of Water Resources chief Tom Buschatzke is the state’s main representative in talks with the Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation, the Legislature must approve any final agreement for managing the river’s water into the future. That responsibility is unique among state legislatures in the basin.
The impression I’ve been under, based on conversations with lawmakers and other officials, is that lawmakers would get their act together and approve a deal that was good for Arizona without fighting each other.
“If I stand up in front of them, go through the background, explain the outcome and what it creates, and we have water users who are supportive, the Legislature will act,” Buschatzke told me back in December.
That may well be true — and anyway, there’s no deal that’s good for Arizona to vote on — but the communication breakdown around the comment letter doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence.
“At the end of the day, we agree in principle: the Colorado River is in trouble and the responsibility to conserve it is all of ours, including the Upper Basin,” the Democrats’ statement continues. “ALL Arizonans have an equal stake in securing our share of the Colorado River and Arizona’s water future.”
It’s not just Arizona: The draft EIS for Colorado River management is unpopular across the basin, albeit for different reasons. Whereas Arizona says the federal government’s plans would cut Arizona’s river supplies too drastically — and in potential violation of the law — the Upper Basin state of Colorado says the plans don’t do enough, per Colorado Politics. Colorado officials also levied some similar criticisms to their Arizona counterparts — namely, that the draft EIS includes scenarios that would require legal authorities that don’t yet exist and thus are “too remote and speculative to be considered as part of a reasonable alternative."
“In short, none of the proposed alternatives has the requisite combination of sufficiently robust and feasible operations consistent with current legal authority under the Law of the River,” a comment letter from the state reads.
Stanton sounds off: Democratic Arizona Congressman Greg Stanton has joined the crowd of voices warning against federal action on the Colorado River basin, KTAR’s Kylie Werner reports.
“There’s a really good chance [the federal government] could make a decision that is not good for Arizona. But more importantly — almost inevitably — it will end up in litigation,” he told KTAR. “If it ends up in litigation, this could be 10 or more years before we actually get a final decision and we’ll sort of be in no man’s land in the meantime.”
Willcox Basin farmers push back: Farmers in Cochise County are unsurprisingly concerned about the state’s designation of an active management area in the Willcox Basin, limiting groundwater pumping and forcing them to cut consumption, per the Republic’s Clara Migoya.
"If we have to cut, our land becomes worthless, because no one is going to buy it with pistachio trees they can't irrigate,” a nut farmer told Migoya.
Water is political: Conservative groups including Turning Point Action and Arizonans for Responsible Growth are backing one of the slates of candidates running for the Salt River Project’s district boards, which set rates and oversee the utility, Jeremy Duda reports for Axios Phoenix. There are two slates of candidates running for the board — one, led by former Corporation Commissioner Sandra Kennedy, is the comparatively liberal “Clean Energy Team,” while the other, led by Chris Dobson, is the conservative “Elected Leadership for SRP” slate. TPA and ARG are backing that latter slate, though they aren’t coordinating their support, representatives told Duda.
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ADAWS bears fruit: The Arizona Water Company, which serves Casa Grande and communities along the front of the Superstition Mountains, among other areas, has been named a designated water provider as part of the state’s new Alternative Designation of Assured Water Supply program. AWC is the first provider in Pinal County to receive a designation through the program, which allows providers to apply for designations despite groundwater restrictions if they agree to reduce pumping and bring in new sources of water. The designations are based on a 100-year assured water supply.
“Pinal County has waited a decade for water solutions like this one, and today we are proving that Arizona has what it takes to conquer our water challenges and deliver real results for our communities,” Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a statement Wednesday.
Everyone is interested in the federally managed reservoirs of the Southwest — even reality star and “media mogul” Kim Kardashian.
She was spotted with her suspected beau — F1 racer Lewis Hamilton — taking in the desert sunset at Lake Powell, according to TMZ, which broke the not-quite-must-read story in classic TMZ style.
People Magazine followed up with more confirmation, based on the fact that the duo posted separate sunset pics of the same sunset on the same day.
