A Native American tribe in Arizona reached a deal Thursday with the U.S. government not to use some of its Colorado River water rights in return for $150 million and funding for a pipeline project.

The $233 million pact with the Gila River Indian Community, announced in Phoenix, was hailed as an example of the kind of cooperation needed to rescue a river crucial to a massive agricultural industry and essential to more than 40 million people in seven Western U.S. states and Mexico. Officials termed it “compensated conservation.”