It’s impossible to talk about water in Arizona without talking about the Colorado River.
It supplies water to 40 million people across the American West, including more than two dozen tribes, cities like Phoenix and Tucson, and agriculture. The river travels some 1,450 miles all told and drains into seven US states, including Arizona, and two in Mexico.
A proposed water rights settlement for three Native American tribes that carries a price tag larger than any such agreement enacted by Congress took a significant step forward late Monday with introduction in the Navajo Nation Council.
Colorado and other Upper Basin states must pay particular attention to recently published scientific studies detailing the improved water budget on the Colorado River Basin. On April 4, 2024, The Colorado Sun published a story with the headline “Cherish that hamburger. It cost a quarter of the Colorado River, according to researchers.”
Arizona, much like California and other states with large deserts, is having an issue with dwindling Colorado River water levels.
With so many people living in and moving to Arizona, specifically the Phoenix area, state and local agencies are working toward water solutions, including expanding the Bartlett Dam and adding new infrastructure.
Rep. Scott Peters and Sen. Alex Padilla introduced legislation Tuesday to help alleviate the western water crisis, stemming from the long-term drought conditions affecting the Colorado River and its reservoirs.
Plumbing problems at the dam holding back the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. are spurring concerns about future water delivery issues to Southwestern states supplied by the Colorado River.
One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.
Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.
Federal officials have discovered damage inside Glen Canyon Dam that could force limits on how much Colorado River water is released at low reservoir levels, raising risks the Southwest could face shortages that were previously unforeseen.
The damage was recently detected in four 8-foot-wide steel tubes — called the river outlet works — that allow water to pass through the dam in northern Arizona when Lake Powell reaches low levels. Dam managers spotted deterioration in the tubes after conducting an exercise last year that sent large flows from the dam into the Grand Canyon.
Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which supplies water to farmers who grow most of the nation’s winter vegetables, planned to start a conservation program in April to scale back what it draws from the critical Colorado River.
Even following a water year like 2023 and historic flooding events in recent months, California continues to see the need to conserve water. A water year, or a “wet year,” according to the United States Geological Survey, is defined as a 12-month period in which precipitation levels are measured.
