In a water deficit, Arizona contemplates a future without Colorado River access
Water from the Colorado River covers more than a third of Arizona’s total water usage, but the state is increasingly losing access to that supply. The state is no longer in what Terry Goddard, the president of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Board of Directors, called “a fool’s paradise.” Arizona had maintained a surplus of water since the mid-1980s, but that’s not the case today. Now, it’s losing water, and it’s losing it fast. That loss, and potential future loss, was the focal point of Arizona’s state legislature Tuesday, starting with a presentation from the Central Arizona Project on the status of the state’s water supply in which legislators heard about the tensions between Arizona and other Colorado River Basin states over access to groundwater.
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