Experts in water policy at ASU are raising alarm about a lack of planning for an ever-dwindling supply of water amid continuing drought conditions.
Water from the Colorado River has been allocated between seven states, including Arizona, for decades, but the current guidelines for sharing the river are coming to an end in October 2026. Through data attainment and analysis, University researchers are identifying potential solutions to water issues.
The federal government imposed a Nov. 11 deadline for replacing the water-sharing agreement between the states, hoping to speed up development of a plan. States were unable to come to an agreement by that deadline, Politico reported.
Cynthia Campbell, the director of policy innovation for ASU's Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, said "there is no plan" prepared to replace the prior agreement. For about three years, states have been negotiating with no progress.
"The seven states cannot agree on how to divide up a smaller river, and how to deal with shortage and how to adjust or adapt operating conditions for that shortage," Campbell said.
The failure to come up with a new system could mean the loss of available water for Arizona, Campbell said. Colorado River users in the state make their water orders for the next year by Oct. 1, and without the new rules, these entities could be unaware of the amount they need to order.
"This has been the challenge for cities for the past several years," Campbell said. "They've been scrambling to try to figure out, 'How do I adapt to a problem that I can't define?'"
The Nov. 11 deadline was set so the federal government could evaluate the environmental impact of such a plan and prepare for its implementation, Campbell said in a written statement.
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Kathryn Sorensen, the director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute, said the Colorado River basin area has been suffering from unprecedented drought conditions.
"It's not just a drought," Sorensen said. "It's the worst drought that paleontologists can find on the fossil record in the last 1,200 years."
She also said the circumstances surrounding the original plans are no longer attainable. When the water was initially distributed, there was more snowpack and runoff from the Rocky Mountains than is experienced today.
Campbell said climate change has required dramatic changes in how policymakers manage the river.
"The amount of water that that river produces today is not what it used to produce very reliably," Campbell said. "The kinds of algorithms and models that the federal government and others have used to manage the river and predict how much water would be available … don't work anymore."
Campbell said an objective of the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative is to work with state agencies to find solutions for water challenges like quality and conservation. The Kyl Center, which contributes to the initiative, produces research papers and visualization tools designed to make complex data on water more digestible, Sorensen said.
Grant Heminger, a research and policy analyst at the Kyl Center, said the organization uses public records to find information to create these resources, as well as outreach to fill gaps in the available data.
"There's legal requirements for a lot of water providers to keep track of certain information every year that they have to report ... A state agency, an individual municipality or one of these non-regulatory agencies at the state level might have the right data," Heminger said.
From there, the Kyl Center assesses who to present the newfound information to and how. Heminger said the center's resources are often geared toward specific audiences, including the public, state legislators or local decision makers.
Heminger said the issues facing the Colorado River are major, but not ones that Arizona is entirely unprepared for.
"Taking reductions on our Colorado River is not unprecedented," Heminger said."It is also worth remembering that there has been some degree of preparation for this in the last decade or so."
The state has the infrastructure to deal with cuts to water availability, Heminger said. In the event of a "real, legitimate shortage," he said the state should have measures ready to deal with the difficulties.
"It's going to be bad, but it's not a complete, massive, mega paradigm shift that we've never had to do reductions before," Heminger said. "That's important for people to know."
Edited by Carsten Oyer, George Headley and Pippa Fung.
Reach the reporter at msweador@asu.edu and follow @miasweador on X.
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