Business groups across the West are calling on the federal government to give at least $2 billion for Colorado River projects. Dozens of chambers of commerce sent a letter to Congress asking for money that would help "ensure long-term water, food and energy security" for the businesses, farms and cities that depend on the river.
The Colorado River supplies nearly 40 million people across seven states, and its supplies are severely depleted after more than two decades of drought and climate change. A new federal plan to manage shrinking reservoirs forces big cuts on users in Arizona, California and Nevada.
In the past, federal funding has been a big part of helping the region adapt to drier conditions. Now, the signers of the new letter to Congress are asking for a new infusion of money to keep the region's economy going with less water.
"This is a big deal to the West Coast economy especially, and the economy as a whole," said Mike Huckins, a spokesman for the Greater Phoenix Chamber, which signed the letter. "So the federal government should have some stake in the game for helping us fund some of these solutions."
Money from the federal government could be used for a wide range of projects, from helping fix leaks in city pipes to reducing the risk of wildfire near streams. In the past, federal spending has been used to pay cities and farms to leave some of their water in major reservoirs.
The call for funding comes at a contentious time. The seven states that use it spent years locked in tense negotiations about how to share the burden of cutbacks, but failed to come to an agreement. Those states remain firmly split into two camps; the Upper Basin of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin of Arizona, California and Nevada. The two groups are hinting at a possible court battle in the near future.
The new letter, however, includes signers from all seven states.
Negotiators from Arizona and Colorado, for example, have spent month after month at odds about how to manage the river, but the Greater Phoenix Chamber and the Denver Metro Area Chamber of Commerce both seem to agree about the need for major, regionwide funding for water projects.
"We need to save the system," said Sen. Tim Dunn (R-Yuma). "So that's the lens we're looking at. And when you come together, trying to figure how we can collectively do that in a bipartisan and a bi-basin, complete basin way, we've had some great conversations on that."
Dunn has been part of the push for federal Colorado River funding, and said it will be important to focus on long-term projects.
"We're very conscious about just trying to do stuff that's just a band-aid," he said. "We want to make sure [they're] long-term investments. That's how we built the West."
In May, a different coalition sent a similar letter to Congress, which also asked for $2 billion in funding. That message came from farm districts, environmental nonprofits, Native American tribes, cities and others.
Calls for federal funding have been increasing within Arizona since the federal government dealt mandatory cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada while sparing their upstream counterparts.
Max Wilson, water resources management advisor for the city of Phoenix, has argued that the federal government has the responsibility to help downstream states deal with those new cuts.
"The federal government has made a choice to place all of this burden exclusively on the Lower Basin, and choices have consequences," he said in an August meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee. "Part of that consequence is that they are going to have to be part of funding the billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure it is going to take to withstand the harm that they are causing to the Lower Basin."
Wilson told KJZZ earlier this summer that his city will be able to survive Colorado River cuts, but will need to spend billions of dollars on new technology and construction to keep taps flowing in the long term. That spending will mean higher bills for ratepayers.
Water leaders across the region have outlined major needs for funding, and included some potential infrastructure projects on a kind of wishlist sent to the Interior Department. The projects would help cities, farms and tribes withstand a drier future, but would cost more than $25 billion dollars in Arizona alone.
Copyright 2026 KJZZ News