Arizona’s top water negotiator is working behind the scenes to avoid “extremely draconian” cuts to the state’s share of the Colorado River. It’s an eleventh-hour effort to work with the federal government, which is expected to release new rules for managing water in late July.
Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, briefed the public on the process of negotiations and the state’s plans to adapt to water cutbacks.
The seven states that use the Colorado River have been under pressure to agree on new rules for managing its water, but have been at an impasse for more than a year. Absent that agreement, the federal government will impose its own rules for sharing water when the current ones expire later this year.
A draft of those rules imposed huge cutbacks on the Central Arizona Project, which brings Colorado River water to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. The three states that make up the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada, countered with a proposal to voluntarily cut back on water use and avoid harsher, mandatory cuts from the federal government.
Now, Buschatzke is trying to convince the federal government to adopt it.
“Based on the meeting I had this morning with the Lower Basin states and the federal team, I think we're getting closer to that adoption,” he said in Tuesday’s meeting, “But I can't say at this time, unequivocally, that they're going to adopt it in a form that's acceptable to us.”
Buschatzke said he had been working with the federal government to overcome some of the “heartburn” the Lower Basin proposal caused for their upstream counterparts — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Patrick Dent, assistant general manager of water policy at the Central Arizona Project, said his agency had been working to soften the impact of potential major cutbacks. Under the Lower Basin Proposal, Arizona’s cutbacks would result in a 20% cut to water designated for municipal and industrial users.
Dent says those cuts could be eased to 14% for 2027 and 2028 due to CAP efforts, including a plan to operate wells in the Yuma area and send their water to Mexico. That could free up water in CAP’s canal that would have been Mexico-bound, so that it can instead be used by Arizona cities and towns facing cutbacks.
No matter what happens, Buschatzke said most cities are well prepared for cutbacks.
“Cities have been planning for the use of their water portfolios for many years,” he said. “They've been aware of this potential outcome for many years, and I think each municipal water provider is going to have to determine how it deploys its resources in the face of these cuts.”
The level of preparedness varies from city to city, but many in the Phoenix area can lean on groundwater, the Salt River or transfer deals with neighbors when times are tight on the Colorado River. In the future, they might get help from water recycling technology or transfers for desalinated ocean water.
