With water, bring demand in line with supply
OPINION — Arizona’s response to the latest Colorado River plan has focused heavily on economic damage. Officials warn that deeper cuts could hurt agriculture, mining, semiconductor manufacturing, housing and future growth.
That concern is understandable, but it avoids the central issue. Arizona is still trying to protect every major demand on a river that no longer produces enough water to support them all.
The Colorado River is delivering less water than the system was built to use. Bureau of Reclamation data show that natural flow at Lees Ferry averaged about 14.6 million acre-feet annually from 1906 through 2024, but only about 12.4 million acre-feet during the 2000 through 2024 drought period.
That is not a negotiating problem. It is a supply problem.
Arizona should fight for a fair share of the river, but fairness will not refill Lake Mead or Lake Powell. Even if the state wins concessions from California or the Upper Basin, the larger imbalance remains.
The answer is to bring demand into line with supply.
That means protecting existing communities before approving more water-dependent growth. It means rejecting subdivisions that rely on uncertain future supplies, requiring new industry to provide renewable water, limiting groundwater pumping, expanding wastewater reuse and eliminating wasteful uses such as nonfunctional turf.
Agriculture will also have to become more efficient, and some acreage will have to come out of production. Those choices will be painful, but postponing them will only make the eventual cuts harsher.
Arizona has spent decades treating growth as the priority and water as a problem to solve later. Later has arrived.
An economy built on water that does not exist is not sustainable. Arizona can impose limits now, while it still has choices, or wait until falling reservoirs and dry wells impose them for us.
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