From email from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (Doug Maceachern):
September 2, 2025
It’s time to set the record straight regarding the negotiations among Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado regarding the post-2026 Colorado River operations.
Amid the backdrop of prolonged drought and declining flows of the Colorado River, the seven states have the unenviable task of balancing the amount of water Mother Nature provides and the stressors related to the use of that water for 40 million people and millions of acres of farmland.
Discussions among the seven basin states continue, but finding common ground has been extremely challenging. The United States has told the seven basin states that if an agreement is not reached by November 11, 2025, they will move forward with an alternative. The terms and conditions of that alternative have not been disclosed. There is still an opportunity to avoid the path of federally imposed operating guidelines and the legal entanglements that would likely follow. But the clock is ticking.
However, Arizona, California, Nevada, and our partners in Mexico have not been idle. Over the last decade, we have reduced our water use so that the elevation of Lake Mead, the primary storage reservoir supplying water to our three states and Mexico, is over 100 feet higher because of those water-use reductions. That is over two trillion gallons of water. Arizona’s contribution to that success story? Nearly a trillion gallons of that total entirely on our own.
Those reductions have been painful, but they have not been enough to sustain the river. Moving forward, all seven states must do more.
That outcome requires bold thinking, sacrifice, and a willingness to share in protecting the Colorado River by all seven states that benefit from its bounty. The tool to achieve that goal is simple: reduce water use.
Arizona, California, and Nevada have put forth a Post 2026 operational proposal that requires mandatory, certain and verifiable water-use reductions of additional billions of gallons of water by the three Lower Basin states.
To the contrary, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico have not agreed, nor have they proposed, any mandatory, certain and verifiable reductions in their water use. Not. One. Single. Gallon. Instead, they propose that water-use reductions needed to save the Colorado River come solely from Arizona, California and Nevada.
Your article sounds like it was written to try and make Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico look bad. The reality is California, and Arizona despite all their cut backs still use about 25% more of the available Colorado River Basin water than all the other partners combined!! Plus most of the conservation has happened in Arizona, and Nevada. California uses by far the most water, and has done by far the least to conserve. Plus they are the only ones on the coast where they can construct endless amounts of desalination plants, and are not doing it. Between that and over farming the desert they could be and should be completely eliminated from any allocation of Colorado river water over the next few decades. Arizona has done excellent, and is a great roll model the other pact partners should follow. But they still need to face the music and realize that farming the desert is not sustainable in the long run with our dry future. So the only place anyone should be trying to make look bad, is the only place that actually looks bad IE: California!
Sean,
Thanks for commenting.
The commentary was written by Tom Buschatzke the Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and I think he was trying to explain why there has been little progress with the Post-2026 operating guidelines for Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
You can get his contact information off the ADWR website: https://www.azwater.gov.
John Orr
https://coyotegulch.blog/