Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
February 23, 2026
Key Points
- A coalition of cities and water providers, led by the Central Arizona Project, has launched a media campaign targeting proposed Colorado River cuts.
- The campaign includes a TV ad that claims Arizona “is being unfairly targeted” by some water management alternatives outlined in a federal document.
- After the seven Colorado River states failed to reach an agreement on shortage sharing, the federal government turned to its own set of proposals.
A Central Arizona Project-backed advocacy group called the Coalition for Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline has begun rolling out television ads and online videos defending the water supplier’s rights to a Colorado River that is under serious hydrological and political strain.
“Arizona is being unfairly targeted for reductions of Colorado River water that would cripple our state, flatten our economy and weaken our nation’s defense,” an ad aired by the coalition warns. It goes on to note that Arizona communities have done their part, committing more water for conservation in Lake Mead than those in other states, and that several options that the federal government is weighing for managing the river would fall hardest on the state.
One such alternative under review, CAP General Manager Brenda Burman recently said, would essentially dry up the agency’s canal from the river to Phoenix and Tucson…The alternatives Burman was referring to were never stated as the Trump administration’s preference, but rather as ideas from which the seven states that share the river water might draw from in writing an agreement for sharing in its worsening shortages. Now that the states have failed to reach such an agreement, though, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is faced with either enacting something like them or rapidly developing a new federal plan in time to replace river guidelines that expire this autumn…While the materials don’t directly state members’ intended method of securing water, some of the videos lean heavily on the so-called Law of the River and its guarantee of water from the four headwaters states to Arizona, California and Nevada. This theme reiterates a point that CAP and Arizona water officials have stressed over the last year or so, that if push comes to shove in a legal battle, they have the 1922 Colorado River Compact on their side.
“The Lower Basin has paper water, uses wet water, and wants the Upper Basin to deliver ghost water” — Kevin Pilgrim