The federal government is expected to announce big cutbacks for users of the Colorado River soon, and Phoenix-area cities will likely get hit especially hard. Even if major reductions come for their supplies, taps won’t be going dry anytime soon.
Colorado River shortages are no surprise. Climate change and drought have been steadily cutting into water supplies for about 26 years. Various plans to rein in demand have emerged throughout that time, and new cutbacks have been in the works for more than a year.
The amount of water that each Valley city gets from the Colorado River varies significantly from city to city, but the majority receive at least some. Some cities are more prepared than others to weather today’s drier conditions, but most have at least some plan to deal with new Colorado River reductions.
“Residents should feel confident that all cities have been preparing for a future with less Colorado River water,” said Max Wilson, water resources management advisor for the city of Phoenix. “This has been a situation that we have been actively monitoring for a long time and taking actions for decades to be able to withstand Colorado River cuts.”
The Interior Department set the table for new cuts on Friday, laying out the framework of a plan that would allow the federal government to cut the Colorado River supply for Arizona, California and Nevada by up to 40%.
Arizona politicians and water officials called the plan “unacceptable” and warned that it could “devastate” the state’s economy. They urged the federal government to adopt a counterproposal that would soften the pain of those cutbacks.
The Central Arizona Project carries Colorado River water past homes in north Phoenix on March 26, 2026. The amount of water flowing through the canal could be cut significantly under new federal plans to rein in demand.
A second announcement, which may come in the next few days, will deliver specifics about the size of cuts to the Phoenix area in 2027 and 2028. Regardless of their scale, city leaders say they will be able to keep taps running.
Through a combination of backup supplies, engineering projects and transfer deals, cities are able to survive cutbacks. Lauren Hixson, water resources manager with the town of Gilbert, said the myriad fixes will come at a cost.
“Arizona’s not running out of water, but we are running out of cheap water,” she said. “It’s harder to access, harder to provide, and — through the needed infrastructure investments and acquisition of additional supplies — it is going to get more expensive to provide that water supply to our communities.”
Like any good investor, most utility managers have focused on diversifying their portfolios. Essentially, the more different sources of water that flow to a city, the more it can tolerate cuts to one of those sources. In the Valley, that primarily means getting water from underground aquifers and the Salt River.
Underground stores of water, pulled up by a system of wells, are carefully managed under state law and can give cities a backup in times of shortage on the surface. In some cases, water agencies have been taking excess water from the Colorado River for years and adding it to the underground stash, with the idea that it could be retrieved in times like these.
Hixson, the Gilbert water manager, said the town has been drilling eight new wells to access groundwater supplies.
“Gilbert has been investing and preparing for these challenges for years through responsible management, strategic planning, and infrastructure investment,” she said. “Therefore we do have the supply to meet these challenges.”
In July, the Arizona Water Banking Authority announced that it will use its stored water to make utilities whole in the event of cutbacks to their supplies from the Colorado River.
Stewart Mountain Dam holds back water from the Salt River in Saguaro Lake on April 23, 2026.
Supplies from the Salt River system will likely get more important for cities adapting to Colorado River cutbacks.
The Salt River, which collects water from high-elevation snowmelt in the mountains north and east of Phoenix, has been a reliable water source for most of the Valley’s history. Its water once flowed freely through Phoenix, and a series of major dams built in the early 20th century allowed for farms and cities to develop throughout the area. A series of reservoirs — such as Roosevelt Lake, Apache Lake and Canyon Lake — store water in the foothills above the Phoenix metro area. Salt River supplies are managed separately from the Colorado River, and many cities may lean harder on that water amid cutbacks to the Colorado.
Generally, older cities in the Phoenix area receive more water from the Salt River than those that were established more recently.
Older, larger cities also tend to have more money for the kind of expensive engineering that can help diversify a water portfolio. For example, Phoenix is building a massive, high-tech water treatment plant that can safely recycle sewage back into purified drinking water. Major cities around the West are betting big on the technology to help withstand drought and climate change in the long term. Phoenix aims to send water from the $350 million facility into city pipes in early 2029.
Cities that use water from the Salt River system are contributing to a multibillion-dollar expansion of Bartlett Dam, which holds back Bartlett Lake. In recent years, after particularly snowy winters, the river has provided more water than the reservoir can hold. A larger dam, cities say, would help them capture, store and use more water from the Salt River system in the future.
For cities that lack diverse water portfolios and the kind of money needed for massive engineering projects, there’s a way for them to benefit from the cities that do. In April, as Colorado River cuts were becoming imminent, the city of Phoenix announced a new water transfer program called the “Secure Water Arizona Program”, or SWAP. Details are still emerging about how it would work, but it promises to connect cities that have water to cities that need water.
Colorado River water flows through the Central Arizona Project canal in Phoenix on March 27, 2026.
The program, which was set up in conjunction with the city of Tucson, would primarily do two things. The first component of SWAP is an emergency pool of water designed to fix short-term water problems. If a small city without much of a backup plan is worried that it won’t have enough water to keep taps flowing, it can use water from the emergency pool to buy some time — only a few weeks or months — while it finds a more permanent fix.
SWAP would also help those cities find more permanent fixes. It is designed to create a platform where willing sellers can find willing buyers. Cities with more long-term water security can afford to transfer some of their supplies, for a price. SWAP may also allow cities to find farm districts that are willing to sell their supplies.
The SWAP program was partially born out of the idea that some Valley cities want to keep their neighbors from going dry to avoid reputational damage to the broader Phoenix metro area. In 2023, the unincorporated community of Rio Verde Foothills saw taps go dry. Its water system is very different from established cities nearby, where large water delivery systems and years of thorough planning make a water crisis like the one in Rio Verde Foothills crisis nearly impossible.
Even so, headlines in national news publications stirred alarm about water shortages in the broader Phoenix area, causing officials in other cities to worry about eroding nationwide confidence in the Valley’s economic future. Leaders in larger cities are working on transfers with neighboring cities and towns to prevent that from happening again.
Such an ethos is on display in Cave Creek, where more than 90% reliance on the Colorado River means that the town of about 5,000 people may be facing the single hardest hit to water supplies anywhere in the West. The threat of those sharp, immediate cuts led Phoenix, Peoria and Surprise to offer their help, buying Cave Creek time to find a longer-term solution.
People fish from a boat in the Colorado River just below Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona on June 17, 2026.
Other water transfers, both in Arizona and across state lines, may be a big part of the long-term plan for cities and towns in the Valley.
For example, farms may find it lucrative to sell some of their supplies to fast-growing cities in the metro that are willing to pay top dollar. Native American tribes, which often hold large, powerful legal rights to access the Colorado River, may also be willing to sell. A $5 billion settlement deal is currently in the works to give three Arizona tribes more access to their Colorado River water. If it passes, they could also gain the ability to lease their water to cities far from their reservations.
Desalination, a high-tech process that can turn salty ocean water into pure, drinkable fresh water, has long been a tempting proposition for water-short cities. High costs and major logistical challenges mean that Arizona is unlikely to build its own desalination plant anytime soon, but a transfer program could allow it to benefit from an already-operational desalination facility.
The Central Arizona Project and a handful of other water agencies around the region are exploring a deal to exchange water rights with a desalination facility in Carlsbad, California. It is the largest desalination facility in the Western hemisphere. Under a potential deal, San Diego County could take more desalinated water than it is currently using and, in turn, use less of its Colorado River water. That water would then be left in the river, where users in Central Arizona would be able to take it, for a price.
Climate scientists say dry times on the Colorado River are not temporary, but rather a permanent resetting of the baseline for how much water shows up in the river and its tributaries every year. Creative accounting, transfer programs and massive engineering projects may be the only way for Valley cities that depend on the Colorado River to survive a future with less of it.
