Arizona lawmakers are tripling the size of the state’s legal fund for potential lawsuits about sharing water from the Colorado River. The new state budget will add $6 million to the pool of money, which was first set up in 2025, bringing the fund to a total of $9 million.
States that share the Colorado River are caught in a standoff about how to cut back on water use amid drought, climate change and shrinking reservoirs. Negotiators from the seven states are under pressure to agree on a new set of rules for sharing water after the current ones expire later this year. They have been unable to forge a deal, meaning that the federal government will likely force a water management plan on the states.
If that happens, states are likely to sue one other or the federal government, sending the Colorado River’s future to a messy legal battle that would likely end up in the Supreme Court.
Arizona has already secured an East Coast law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, to represent the state in Colorado River matters.
Legions of Colorado River experts have warned that a court battle would be bad for the river and the nearly 40 million people who rely on its water each year — in major cities from Phoenix and Los Angeles to Denver and Salt Lake City.
The seven states that use the river are divided into two camps: the Upper Basin of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico and the Lower Basin of Arizona, California and Nevada.
State leaders, including some of the negotiators themselves, have repeatedly said that they want to avoid lawsuits, but have not done the work required to steer the river away from a courtroom. Negotiations are stalled, with water managers making vague threats about potential lawsuits.
Earlier this week, a top water official in Utah warned that lawsuits would cause “generational damage to basin relationships” and called for a “legal détente” among the states, all while Utah and its allies appear ready to test their own legal theory — an interpretation of a 1922 agreement that would absolve their states from major cutbacks.
Meanwhile, water officials in Arizona have pushed back on an earlier federal proposal for managing the river that dealt major cuts to cities and towns in the Phoenix area, appearing to hint that Arizona could pursue legal action if it was implemented without changes.
The exact details of a Colorado River legal battle would depend on the contents of a federal plan that will likely be released later this summer. The upcoming deadline gives states a small window to get back to the negotiating table and steer away from court, but they still appear far from an agreement.
Water has become an increasingly hot topic in Arizona politics. In a statement on this week’s bipartisan budget agreement, Gov. Katie Hobbs cited “water security” as something delivered by the new budget, right alongside job creation and education.
