The seven states that share the Colorado River have now blown through two consecutive deadlines to renegotiate water-sharing rules. They missed November 2025. They missed February 2026. With the existing federal guidelines expiring this fall, the U.S. Department of the Interior is increasingly likely to impose its own interim framework on the basin, whether the states agree or not. For Scottsdale and the rest of the Valley, that is not a procedural footnote. It is a warning about the life we have built here.
We have covered this crisis before. The short version: the 1922 Colorado River Compact divided water that, in many years, does not exist. Scientists warned the negotiators at the time. The flows recorded in the late 1890s were already dangerously low. The negotiators chose optimism over evidence, and a century of over-allocation followed. The river is now down roughly a third from its 20th century average.
Arizona Is First in Line for Pain…