IN FOCUS - Nov. 14, 2025

With a federally-imposed deadline passing this week without a deal on water cuts among the seven Colorado River basin states, the likelihood of litigation or federal intervention is only going up.

At this point, it’s a deadlock between the three lower basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) that need water and the four upper basin states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) that have it. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has for years taken a mostly hands-off approach to the dispute, urging the states to voluntarily reach an agreement on reduced allocations from a shrinking Colorado River. Federal patience may be wearing thin, however.

This week, in a rare show of bipartisan solidarity, Governor Katie Hobbs and Republican and Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter requesting federal intervention in negotiations. The missive singled out upper basin states that have “refused to implement any volume of binding, verifiable water supply reductions.”

Governor Hobbs was more blunt in an interview with reporter Howard Fischer: “I don’t see a solution happening,” she said.

The stakes couldn’t be higher: the Colorado River and its primary storage reservoirs with Lake Mead and Lake Powell provides water to support 40 million people across the West. Arguably no state has more to lose in negotiations than Arizona, which relies heavily on the Colorado River but has water rights more junior than any other basin state except Nevada.

So, it’s perhaps no coincidence Arizona is the first state to issue a public call for the federal government to become more forceful in brokering a deal. And, if no agreement is in the offing, Arizona has prepared for that, too. The state has already set aside $1.5 million in a legal defense fund for potential water litigation.

Truthfully, that’s likely little more than a down payment on future legal costs if a courtroom fight breaks out among the Colorado River Basin states and federal government. An earlier series of Colorado River-related SCOTUS cases, known as Arizona v. California, dragged on for 70 years.