Across the Phoenix area, cities and towns are preparing for a future with less water from the Colorado River. Arizona is working on a deal with neighboring states and the federal government that would volunteer to cut back on the state’s take from the Colorado River.
Throughout the Valley, local governments are signing agreements with the federal government to make it happen.
The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the West’s reservoirs and dams, has plans to pay cities from Gilbert to Glendale to use less of the Colorado River.
In recent years, sweeping cuts to water allocations in Arizona and some other states that use the Colorado River have been made possible with big chunks of federal money. The Biden administration set aside $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for Colorado River work.
Beginning in 2022, hundreds of millions of dollars from that pool have been used to pay cities, farms and tribes to temporarily use less water. Those supplies are left behind in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. Propping up the reservoir, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border, has become a federal priority in recent years. Its water levels are now the lowest they’ve been since the reservoir filled about 90 years ago. If water levels there drop much further, they could reduce the amount of hydropower generated inside Hoover Dam.
Haley Paul, senior policy director with the nonprofit environmental group Audubon Southwest, said paid conservation is a useful “arrow in our quiver” when it comes to keeping water in major reservoirs.
“As we've had these terrible back-to-back low water years, the only thing we can do at the moment is to simply use less, take less out of the reservoir, and keep it up there in the river, Paul said. “And it's nice that we have this incentive for cities to do so.”
The Trump administration paused the release of those water-saving funds in early 2025. Since then, details about the amount of money left have been murky. In a July meeting of Arizona water officials, the state’s top Colorado River negotiator said that federal officials told him $354 million was available for water conservation programs.
That money expires on Sept. 30. Because of that, some cities are quickly working on new deals before that deadline to lock in paid conservation for years into the future.
In Glendale, for example, local water officials are working on a deal that would cover 2027 and 2028.
Megan Sheldon, water services deputy director in Glendale, said the new deal would be an extension of a previous agreement that ran from 2023 through 2025. During that time, Glendale left about a third of its Colorado River water in Lake Mead. Glendale gets 40% to 45% of its total water supply from the Colorado River.
Sheldon said the amount of water Glendale can leave behind is a relatively small portion of the total Colorado River system, which spans seven Western states and includes some of the largest reservoirs in the country.
“We want to do our part for the system and conserve where we can,” Sheldon said. “We would do so regardless of the compensation piece. Compensation is nice. It helps offset some of the rising costs for chemicals, for electricity. It also helps us invest in our infrastructure so we can continue to provide a reliable water delivery system.”
Glendale and other nearby cities can get by with less Colorado River water because they generally draw water from a number of other sources too. Many have already outlined plans to lean harder on water from the Salt River Project and underground aquifers — including water they have been sending underground as a backup plan for times of shortage.
Under the planned deal, Glendale would leave less water in Lake Mead than it did under its previous deal, which ran through 2025. Sheldon said uncertainty about the future of water supplies drove the decision.
Cities generally use the federal money to fund infrastructure projects that save water directly, or help them access and use those other sources.
That previous deal brought $4.8 million to Glendale’s water department. Sheldon said the federal money is helping pay for new groundwater wells that retrieve stored water from underground. It also helps fund long-term conservation campaigns like a rebate program for customers who install more efficient toilets, washing machines and sprinklers.
A new water conservation agreement is also in the works in Mesa, which would begin this year and run through 2028. Joe Giudice, the city’s water resources director, said Reclamation approached Mesa to see if it was able to help its broader conservation efforts.
“We expressed an interest because this provides us another tool, another opportunity to help preserve the system and participate in conservation,” Giudice said. “And it's very flexible for Mesa.”
Giudice said his city has also been working on new systems to access water when Colorado River shortages are necessary.
Other cities are not entering new deals because they are already in long-term agreements with the federal government. The town of Gilbert, for example, signed a 10-year deal with Reclamation in early 2025. It will send nearly $17 million to the town, which will leave about 3% of its total Colorado River allocation in Lake Mead over the course of a decade.
Gilbert plans to use those funds for two big water-saving projects. One will install more than 27,000 high-tech meters so utility managers can detect and fix water leaks more quickly. A different project will expand Gilbert’s ability to recharge underground water stores for future use.
“I do think it's an effective use of money when cities, tribes and other water users can take that money and reinvest it in their systems to become more efficient or conserve more water down the line,” Audubon’s Haley Paul said.
The federal government is offering cities $325 per acre-foot of water they conserve. An acre-foot is roughly the amount of water it would take to cover a football field with one foot of water. The Arizona Department of Water resources says one acre-foot is roughly a year’s supply of water for three homes in the Phoenix area.
That price tag is down from previous years, in which cities were paid $400 per acre-foot.
Arizona cities are expected to take the most significant cuts under the next round of Colorado River management plans, but farmers may also receive similar payments as part of conservation plans. California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which uses more Colorado River water than any other farm district or city in the West, has received more than $500 million as part of similar programs in the past.
A separate $45 million program funded water conservation on farms in the Rocky Mountain states where the river begins, saving a little more than 1% of the Colorado River water used by those four states.
