A new plan for sharing the Colorado River is here, and it could deal big cutbacks to Arizona’s water supply. Officials around the state are criticizing the plan and outlining a response that could soften the impact of water cutbacks.
The new strategy, announced on Friday, would allow the federal government to cut the Colorado River supply for Arizona, California and Nevada by up to 40%. Cuts that large would only be possible under a worst-case scenario, but could become a reality if record-setting dry conditions continue into the coming decade.
A statement from the Arizona Department of Water Resources said that “such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”
The new federal plan lays out a 10-year framework for managing the river. It forces policymakers back to the negotiating table every two years to reassess river conditions and tweak the water-sharing rules accordingly.
The Interior Department is expected to announce the details of cuts for the first two years of that plan, 2027 and 2028, in the coming days. Arizona officials expect them to incorporate elements of a counterproposal from the three Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada. Those states would volunteer to make substantial cutbacks — closer to 20% of their overall take from the river — but avoid the harshest cuts allowed under the federal plan.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said the new plan “contains unacceptable options that include the federal government forcing Arizona to take the majority of draconian water cutbacks” and encouraged federal water managers to adopt the “commonsense, compromise proposal” put forward by her state and its allies.
“Implementing the Lower Basin agreement would protect Arizona from massive water cuts,” she wrote in a press release, “distribute reductions more fairly across the Lower Basin States, and provide stability and protection to the water supply that our communities rely upon.”
Other Arizona politicians also criticized the plan. A joint statement from the state’s two senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, wrote that the new plan “could place an unfair burden on Arizona.”
Arizona leaders called on the river’s Upper Basin states to do more to share the burden of shortages. Those states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — did not volunteer to take any mandatory cutbacks. Those states are legally required to send a certain amount of water to their downstream neighbors every year. Officials in those states argue they already take cutbacks because climate change and drought give them less water to send.
Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s top water negotiator, told reporters the Upper Basin states “get cuts from Mother Nature every year” and have to live within “what Mother Nature provides us.”
“I’m grateful that the statement recognizes clearly the need to develop a system that’s based on what water is available,” Shawcroft said of the federal plan. “Not what water is demanded.”
The Upper Basin’s stance has been a focal point of tense negotiations over the past few years, and appears to still be a major point of contention for their counterparts in the lower basin.
A statement from the Arizona Department of Water Resources said that Colorado River talks have been “an exercise in lowering expectations, particularly for a long-term, seven-state agreement.”
The agency appears hopeful that the federal government will adopt its proposal to voluntarily cut back on water use, which it says was a response to the “increasingly bleak scenario” of stagnating negotiations.
Across the region, federal and state officials alike said they were still working toward a seven-state agreement. The federal plan explicitly leaves the door open for states to come to a consensus, and use the resulting plan to supersede federal water management strategy.
John Berggren, a water policy expert with the nonprofit conservation group Western Resource Advocates, said the federal framework provides some “short-term certainty” and could be used as a chance for states to take a new approach to negotiations.
“Clearly, the last two and a half years of negotiations hasn't worked,” Berggren said. “So let's change that up. Let's use this as an opportunity, as a pivot point, to start something new, and get to that seven-state agreement.”
Water officials around the Colorado River basin say they are waiting for more details from the federal government’s pending announcement of operating guidelines for 2027 and 2028.
“This is an important milestone, but it is not the finish line,” JB Hamby, California’s top water negotiator, wrote of the plan announced on Friday. “The framework establishes sideboards on operations for the next ten years. It does not conclude the Basin States’ negotiations, predetermine specific operating decisions, including Lake Powell releases or shortages, or serve as the operating plan itself.”