It’ll take a lot of money to help save water from the shrinking Colorado River. Now, Amazon is helping foot the bill.
The ecommerce giant announced that it would send $20 million to water-saving projects in Arizona and California, kicking off a new longer-term effort to rally money for water conservation.
The company formed a new coalition, dubbed the “Colorado River Basin Collaborative,” which collectively aims to spend $100 million on water conservation across two years.
“Companies that benefit from being in that basin have an opportunity, and really a responsibility, to help solve those problems,” said Will Hewes, Amazon’s water sustainability lead.
Amazon says Arizona is a “thriving innovation and logistics hub” for the company. According to its website, Amazon has operated in Arizona since 2007 and invested more than $40 billion in the state.
Hewes cited a new $2.4 million project that aims to improve irrigation efficiency on tribal farmland in northern Arizona. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to identify a specific tribe, citing ongoing negotiations, but said the project would install high-tech sensors that give farmers real-time data about when crops need water, ultimately reducing their draw on Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.
The project is estimated to save about 730 acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot is roughly a year’s supply of water for three homes in the Phoenix area.
Hewes also pointed to the company’s $2.2 million effort to expand leak detection and repairs in Orange County, California.
With the massive amount of funding needed to turn around the Colorado River’s supply-demand imbalance, Hewes said Amazon’s contribution “certainly isn't going to solve the whole problem, but it's also a larger scale than we've seen in corporate water stewardship before.”
He said Amazon’s multi-year funding efforts are aimed at generating some momentum.
“We hope the sum of that ends up being a net win by getting dollars invested quickly, showing what works, learning, and continuing to evolve over time,” Hewes said. “So that we can really get to the larger scale of what the basin needs.”
As demand outpaces supply for water from the Colorado River, massive spending will be needed across the region to help correct that imbalance. Recently, a broad coalition of business groups from all seven states that use the river called on Congress to send $2 billion for water-saving work.
Federal spending played a big role in water conservation during the Biden administration. The Inflation Reduction Act allocated $4 billion for Colorado River work. Remaining funding from that pool was frozen in early 2025, and a major package of new federal money has not yet materialized.
In that time, corporations have been gradually increasing their own spending on the kind of projects that might otherwise receive federal funding. The nonprofit Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which channels corporate money to water-saving efforts through its “Business for Water Stewardship” program, told KJZZ in March that it had contracted more than $27 million from major companies for such projects since 2020.
Todd Reeve, the organization’s CEO, said companies have recently undergone “an awakening” to the idea that water shortages add risk to their business operations in the Colorado River basin, and reputational risk if customers their company is part of the problem rather than the solution.
Haley Paul, a water policy expert with the nonprofit Audubon Society, said Amazon’s funding plan “makes sense and it’s good to see.”
Paul, who closely follows funding for water conservation, said corporate money can go even further when it is paired with additional grants from local, state and federal governments.
“I think that the announcement of this funding speaks to the need to invest in your own backyard,” she said. “It's good to see businesses, not just Amazon, but it looks like some others as well, gathering together to say, ‘Hey, this is important. We need to continue to invest in this Colorado River Basin and all the activity and production that happens here.’”
