Decades ago, Arizona won funding for a massive Colorado River project by agreeing to be first in line for cuts at a time of deep drought. The Trump administration says that time has come.
Decades ago, Arizona won funding for a massive Colorado River project by agreeing to be first in line for cuts at a time of deep drought. The Trump administration says that time has come.
From a secure, windowless room in northern Phoenix, technicians control the Colorado River water that sustains America’s largest desert metropolis.
The vast canal system the team oversees has for four decades conveyed an increasingly scarce commodity across 330 miles of rugged terrain to slake blossoming subdivisions, sprawling farmland and, in recent years, a powerhouse semiconductor industry. It supercharged Arizona’s economy and transformed Phoenix into one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.
But this lifeline, known as the Central Arizona Project, came with a catch. In exchange for billions of federal dollars to build it, the state agreed to lower-priority water rights, putting the aqueduct among the first in line for cuts in a time of deep drought.
“It was the price we had to pay,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a former water director for the city of Phoenix. “The chickens have come home to roost.”
With the seven states that rely on the Colorado River deadlocked over how to split its diminishing supply, the Trump administration is pushing its own plan to divide the water. The three downriver states — Arizona, California and Nevada — would most likely shoulder the most pain, but no single user stands to lose more than the Central Arizona Project.
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