Tribes — especially Arizona tribes — are also at risk, according to Cora Tso, a senior researcher at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. Twenty-two of the Colorado River Basin’s 30 tribes have recognized rights accounting for roughly a quarter of the river’s average supply, Tso said. At least some of their water, such as the Gila River Indian Community’s large share, are in question because they rely on CAP deliveries.

Cynthia Campbell ran Phoenix’s water resources for more than a decade. Today, she’s the director of policy innovation at the Arizona Water Innovation Institute at Arizona State University.

"We’ve driven the system so far down that now we need probably 2 to 4 million acre feet of demand reduction. What that means, in layman’s terms, is that about 2 million acre feet of water that’s being used — not promised, not allocated, used today — needs to stop being used."

Arizona’s industrial boom is driving up water demand, from semiconductor plants to expanding data centers. A team of scientists at Arizona State University is testing technology to repurify and recycle heavily contaminated industrial wastewater.

Using advanced membrane filtration, the technology can handle water even more contaminated than seawater, creating a potential closed-loop system where nearly every drop of industrial wastewater is reused.

The City of Kingman and Mohave County, in partnership with Arizona State University, are encouraging residents to participate in a newly launched groundwater survey focused on understanding rural groundwater concerns across Arizona.

Residents can access the survey by clicking the link below or copying and pasting the URL into their browser: https://tinyurl.com/AZgroundwater

For the region as a whole, “the major impact is going to be on our groundwater,” said Kathryn Sorensen, research director for ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “We will have less Colorado River water to replenish our groundwater pumping and that’s a big problem,” she said.

At the same time, Tucson has a “good runway” to handle CAP cuts because it’s recharged so much CAP water into its aquifer since the early 2000s, Sorensen said.

“Beyond the Tap: Water Insecurity in the United States” panel — This session will outline a new scale for measuring household water insecurity in the U.S., presenting preliminary findings from both national and site-specific studies that used this tool. Patrick Thomson of the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative and Alexandra Brewis of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are among the panelists.

Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said she’s felt litigation is increasingly likely since the basin states missed their initial federal deadline in the fall and their negotiations began to deteriorate. 

“I believe that everybody has kind of stared it down and concluded that litigation isn’t such a horrible idea that it needs to be avoided,” she said.

Over in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies Southern California with about 20% of its water, snowpack is at about 64% of normal.

“ There's no way to sugarcoat it,” said Kathryn Sorensen,  director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “ I've been doing Colorado River stuff for 25 years. This is the worst I've seen.”

“It’s pretty bad and looks like runoff is going to be terrible,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research for the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

But the situation appeared similarly bleak at this point in 2015, she said.

“Then we had that weird miracle May,” she said. “Snowpack was awful, but then for some reason there was a ton of rain. Weird things can happen, so let’s hope weird things happen. Otherwise it’s going to be pretty awful.”