Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and leaders of the six other Western states that rely on the Colorado River met Friday for talks aimed at ending a stalemate over rights to its dwindling supply of water.
The meeting ended without a deal, though Arizona’s governor indicated that progress was made thanks to newfound flexibility from upstream states.
“I was encouraged to hear Upper Basin governors express a willingness to turn water conservation programs into firm commitments of water savings,” Hobbs posted on social media after the two-hour meeting.
Among those Upper Basin governors was Colorado’s Jared Polis, who sat next to Hobbs at the Department of the Interior.
“We have offered sacrifices to ensure the long-term viability of the Colorado River and we remain committed to working collaboratively to find solutions that protect water for our state, while supporting the vitality of the Colorado River and everyone who depends on it,” Polis said in a statement afterward.
Arizona gets roughly 40% of its water from the Colorado River, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Doug MacEachern, the department’s communication administrator, said the Lower Basin states had collectively offered 1.5 million acre feet of cuts from the outset of talks, but the Upper Basin states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – hadn’t budged.
An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land with water 1 foot deep. That’s about 325,851 gallons. A million acre-feet could fill nearly 500,000 Olympic size swimming pools.
“They're not interested in any kind of mandatory cuts,” MacEachern said ahead of Friday’s meeting. “That's pretty radical. It's not exactly what one would call a negotiating posture, but that's where we're at.”
The river supplies nearly 40 million people in seven states. A 1922 compact signed when populations were far smaller allocated 7.5 million acre-feet annually to each basin. Arizona is entitled to 2.8 million acre-feet.
But in the last decade, the total supply has only reached 12.5 million acre-feet – less than half the amount needed for each state to take its full 1922 allocation.
Demand has been steadily increasing across the Southwest even as reservoir levels drop. In 2023, the seven states reached a short-term operating deal that expires at the end of 2026.
The states have spent two years trying to update that plan. After they missed a November deadline, the federal government gave them until Feb. 14 to avoid a settlement imposed by Washington.
With time running out, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum summoned the governors to his office for Friday’s meeting.
“This is one of the toughest challenges facing the West, but the Department remains hopeful that, by working together, the seven basin governors can help deliver a durable path forward,” Burgum said in a statement after the meeting. “We are committed to partnering with them to reach consensus.”
Six of the governors attended. California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent his state’s natural resources secretary.
Hobbs praised Burgum for stepping in. “That level of leadership is necessary, overdue and essential if we are going to break the logjam and reach a durable agreement,” she said ahead of the meeting.
An extended drought began more than two decades ago, and levels plunged in Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Hobbs has been critical of the Upper Basin states, which have blamed shortages on hotter temperatures, drought and reduced overall supply. The downstream states – California, Nevada and Arizona – largely blame overuse and want all states to absorb cuts.
“Arizona has been and will continue to be at the table offering solutions to the long-term protection of the river so long as every state recognizes our shared responsibility,” Hobbs said Friday.
Ahead of the meeting, Hobbs, a Democrat, pitched Arizona’s case in a way likely to win sympathy from President Donald Trump. She stressed the state’s key role in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, winter agriculture and advanced manufacturing as reasons to maximize its share of the river.
The AI and chip industries in particular are high priorities for the president.
Much of Arizona’s population relies on the Central Arizona Project, a $4 billion, 336-mile system of aqueducts, tunnels, pumping plants and pipelines that delivers water from Lake Havasu, which is downstream from Lake Mead on the Colorado River.
Andrea Gerlak, a University of Arizona professor and director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, said “little Band-Aids” like the 2023 deal have bought time but a long-term solution is still needed.
“There have been a lot of good incremental steps over the past 10 years,” she said by email. But, she added, the stalemate is a problem. “No one, me included, would have predicted that the states would not have been able to move forward with a post-2026 agreement.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify that an offer to cut water usage by 1.5 million acre feet was actually made collectively by Lower Basin states, which also include Nevada and California.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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