Hobbs says Arizona will defend its Colorado River water, wants other states to accept cuts

Yahoo

14-05-2025

Arizona is doing its part and taking its hits to conserve the Colorado River, Gov. Katie Hobbs said, and it's time for upstream states to do the same.
The governor assembled a roundtable of water users and officials on May 13 to present what she called a unified front among the state's interests in defending Arizona's share of the Colorado River as time runs short for reaching a deal with other states that use the water. So far, states upstream from Arizona have not offered cutbacks beyond the limits that a paltry snowpack naturally extracts from their farmers.
'It's been more than a little frustrating,' Hobbs said. 'We've come to the table with real solutions, with real proposals. We have real skin in the game,' she said, including billions of dollars in water infrastructure upgrades and in conservation agreements that keep water in the river's reservoirs. 'The upper states need to be willing to take their share as well.'
Gathered at Central Arizona Project headquarters with representatives of cities, tribes, farms and hydropower interests — all reliant on the river water that flowing into the CAP's canal — Hobbs said the state seeks a compromise. Otherwise, supplies could become subject to litigation, an outcome she said she's preparing for in part by seeking a legal fund from legislators.
'We need a signal that we're prepared to defend our water, and that's a strong signal,' Hobbs said.
Negotiations lag: At odds over water cuts, Colorado River states still seek consensus as deadline nears
As the West has warmed and dried, the river that seven states and Mexico share has shrunk. It's a reality that has already brought significant supply cuts to Arizona in particular, and that the states and federal government are trying to address with a new shortage-sharing deal that must be in place by the time the old one expires next year.
U.S. Interior Department officials seek to publish a draft of a plan by summer, though it's unclear if the states will be able to agree on something by then or will simply wait to see what federal officials envision.
So far, the Rocky Mountain states known collectively as the Upper Basin have declined to specify new cuts they might take, because they say they already suffer the consequences of a reduced snowpack that shortchanges their farmers every year.
The federal government has paid some Lower Basin farmers and others to cut back on their demands from Lake Mead's storage bank, and the four Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming argue that their year-in, year-out hardship is unrewarded and largely invisible to water users in the Southwest.
Those state also were slower to develop water that the 1922 Colorado River Compact envisioned for them, and therefore continue to use less even as an age of aridification has threatened their ability to send the Lower Basin its compact-prescribed share each year.
'We have hydrologic shortage every year across all four states,' Colorado's river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, said at a February meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission. 'These are forced cuts based on administration (of water rights) that are not compensated.'
Presented with that viewpoint, Hobbs rejected the claim that the Upper Basin is doing its part.
'That's water on paper,' the governor said. 'It's not real water. We're putting real water on the table and they're not, and they're not feeling any impact based on the system changes.'
Questions linger: Trump's funding freeze muddies water outlook on the drought-stricken Colorado River
Recognizing that the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — use more of the water, those states have together proposed absorbing the first 1.5 million acre-feet of new cuts, enough water to support millions of households. But they want the Upper Basin to agree to share equally in any further cuts that might be necessary to keep the river flowing past Glen Canyon and Hoover dams in especially dry years. (Arizona's full allocation of Colorado River water, including on-river uses such as Yuma farms, is 2.8 million acre-feet. It is second to California's 4.4 million.)
So far, the Upper Basin has not agreed to send more water, and the former Biden administration did not include that option in the alternatives it began analyzing before leaving office.
Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said Trump administration officials appear ready to help reach a 'collaborative agreement.' Because the previous administration's initial approach did not suggest obvious risk of new cuts for the Upper Basin, he said, it may have reduced incentives to deal. Discussions with Interior officials now suggest that they're 'more willing to tweak alternatives' in a way that can prod collaboration.
'This administration is taking more of the tack that we asked for, which is to show risk for both basins,' Buschatzke said.
The two basins continue to talk, but he said he could not rate the chances of reaching a deal this summer.
The Central Arizona Project has already absorbed a reduction of nearly a third of its normal entitlement to the river, partly from voluntary conservation measures and partly because the expiring shortage-sharing agreement lumped the first steep cuts on Arizona. Those mandated cuts reflect the lower priority that the state accepted decades ago in its effort to secure federal authorization for CAP.
CAP Board President Terry Goddard told The Arizona Republic that what's left is critical to the region's health and the U.S. commitment to tribal water rights. He said he doubts it would be legal to further reduce canal flows to those users in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Besides seeking conservation in other states, he said, it could be necessary to shift some of Arizona's next cuts to the Yuma area, which generally has older, superior water rights. Whether by cooperation or eventual emergency legislation, he said, it will be necessary to spread the pain.
'It's a time of shortage an everybody's going to pay the price,' Goddard said. 'We've already paid ours.'
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Tribes including the Tohono O'odham, Ak-Chin and Gila River Indian Community attended the roundtable and said they have collaborated with cities and others to keep water in Lake Mead, and now it's incumbent on the United States to keep water flowing to them through the CAP canal.
Ak-Chin Chairman Gabriel Lopez said the Colorado is his tribe's only reliable source for irrigating its 16,000 acres of farms. The U.S. granted the water in a 1978 settlement meant to make up for other users' depletion of the groundwater that previously supported the community, he said, and is a sacred trust.
'Tribes like us hold senior water rights,' Lopez said. 'We expect these sacred and good-faith obligation agreements to be honored.'
Phoenix and Tucson officials noted that they have dramatically reduced per-capita use over decades and in recent years struck deals to keep some of their water in Lake Mead — a case that other cities around the watershed can also make.
A representative from the Arizona Power Authority said low water kept Hoover Dam from generating a third of its contracted power last year, driving up prices for replacement power. An attorney for Pinal County farm groups said their conversion to groundwater as a replacement for previous CAP cuts will be in jeopardy if there's no baseflow in the canal to help move the groundwater to where it's needed.
The economic development group Valley Partnership said it's the certainty surrounding CAP water that has allowed Phoenix and its ascendant semiconductor industry to thrive. Hobbs agreed, and said computer chip manufacturing in the area makes Arizona's water security a national priority.
'Our growing economy is not just important to Arizona, but it is important to the nation's economy, to national security, to moving manufacturing back to America,' Hobbs said. 'This conversation isn't just about Arizona. It's about our country.'
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at [e-mail].
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs says other Colorado River states must cut water use