Water was high on the list of priorities for the state Legislature this session. But perhaps not high enough.
Lawmakers introduced more than 70 bills that would amend Title 45, the section of code pertaining to the state’s waters, but presented relatively few new ideas. Instead, at a time of historically low reservoirs, dry riverbeds and potentially sweeping cuts to Colorado River supplies, they mostly rehashed old arguments and got stuck in old mud.
By the time the dust cleared, only nine pieces of water legislation advanced to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, and she vetoed all but three of them.
“Most of the legislation that didn’t make it — and frankly most legislation didn’t make it to the end line — were things we’ve been arguing about for the last three years,” said longtime lobbyist Barry Aarons, who represented the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) this session. “The rural interests want to protect their water supplies, and the urban interests want to make sure that they don’t upset any apple carts.”
We’ll explore that and other potential reasons for the slow drip of successful water legislation in a minute.
First, though, let’s talk about what actually did pass. Because tomorrow is Arizona’s “general effective date” — the date on which most laws go into effect.
For a point of comparison, read the edition we wrote about all the water bills that were introduced at the beginning of the session.
Lawmakers appropriated $6 million to the state’s Colorado River litigation fund. While legislators can’t agree on much, they do generally agree — rural and urban, Democrat and Republican alike — that the state should fight for the water it is (arguably) entitled to under the 1922 Colorado River compact. As evidence, look to the sponsor of the bill that initially authorized the money: Gail Griffin, the Southern Arizona Republican and frequent rival of the Governor’s Office on water issues.
Arizona’s water queen, state Rep. Gail Griffin.
The Republican-majority Legislature also kept the budget of the state Department of Water Resources whole in a session where several state agencies saw their funding slashed to balance the state’s pocketbook (and/or to thumb the eye of the governor).
Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority — an agency tasked with procuring more water for the state that historically has been a target of fund raids to backfill the budget — has already seen about two-thirds of its theoretically $1 billion budget swept away in recent sessions. This year, lawmakers cut about $20 million from the agency’s rural water project fund, but held harmless its long-term water augmentation fund, the most important pot of money in WIFA for the state’s future water security.
Lawmakers passed and the governor signed a relatively small change to the state’s new Ag-to-Urban water transfer program — set up by the Legislature in 2025 — allowing some farmers participating in the program to temporarily irrigate their land while they wait for new construction to begin.
Included in the environment section of the budget is language extending a program that funnels groundwater withdrawal fees and other monies toward groundwater infrastructure projects in Pinal County. The program was set to expire soon, and its extension was a priority for beleaguered Pinal County farmers, who saw essentially all their Colorado River water cut under the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan.
“It allows irrigation districts to upgrade their wells and move from open canals to closed pipe, which conserves water by reducing evaporative loss,” Republican Rep. Chris Lopez of Casa Grande, who carried the legislation, said in a statement.
The budget also includes a three-year moratorium on a previously enacted tax incentive for data centers, which often face popular resistance for their use of water and power.
“It’s not a full moratorium on all data centers, but at least not providing those tax incentives should have an impact on how many data centers are applying to come here,” Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan of Tucson said.
And Griffin, the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, did manage to get one water bill past the veto wall: a proposal expanding the ability of county water augmentation authorities to pursue new sources of water and issue bonds to pay for it.
The graveyard
As has been the case for much of her tenure, Hobbs was a prolific veto-er this session.
Her spree extended to several pieces of water legislation: Republican-backed bills pertaining to groundwater supply tracking, water for subdivision development, water quality, water hauling and grandfathered groundwater rights in the Willcox Active Management Area all fell to Hobbs’ veto stamp.
Numerous bills amending — opponents would say kneecapping — the state’s much-sued-over assured water supply program were either vetoed or never made it to the Ninth Floor. (Nevertheless, a judge dealt a serious blow to the program, at least as it’s envisioned by the current administration, with successive rulings in disputes between homebuilders and state regulators over groundwater-dependent subdivision development.)
Controversial legislation enabling the transfer of water from La Paz County’s McMullen Valley to urban water users — a proposal backed by a hedge fund that deals in water “assets” and would stand to gain from the transfer — failed, despite the backing of both AMWUA and the homebuilders, interests that are often on opposite sides.
“Each year, the great state of Maricopa tries its best to take water out of La Paz County,” GOP Rep. Leo Biasiucci, who represents La Paz, Mohave and parts of rural Maricopa County, told the Agenda. “Thankfully, we had enough constituents speak up and say ‘no’ to the idea of more water being taken from La Paz County.”
Biasiucci, an advocate for the kind of rural groundwater protections that have largely eluded lawmakers in recent years, said the biggest water policy division in the Legislature is between rural and urban water users, not Republicans and Democrats or builders and regulators.
“I’m pleased to see the pillaging of La Paz County came to a halt this session,” he said. “But I promise that these special interests, and bigger counties, will never stop trying to take water away from La Paz County.”
Mesa Republican Rep. Justin Olson’s two proposals to enact a moratorium on new municipal taxes and fees — thus preventing cities from raising their water rates to finance conservation and water augmentation projects — both died on the floor.
And while the Legislature did adopt a short-term moratorium on data center tax incentives, the special water usage fee for data centers that Hobbs called for — a fee that would support Colorado River programs — did not make it through the budget process.
“That was still something that felt like it was on the table as we got down to budget negotiations in May and June,” Sundareshan said. “We said, ‘Hey, that’s really still a great idea,’ and Republicans were not having it.”
This is a familiar anecdote. We have seen occasional misplaced optimism about water in the Legislature. In 2025, some rural Republicans, Democrats and even the governor found common ground on groundwater reform, but their plans didn’t make it past Griffin, who has long stonewalled comprehensive groundwater regulations.
Katie Hobbs and lawmakers in 2025, pre-disappointment.
Even in 2025, lawmakers and the governor came together on the Ag-to-Urban program. But whatever optimism and bipartisan agreement existed has largely evaporated after repeated stonewalling by Griffin and vetoing by Hobbs.
And the Colorado River, of course, looms large. The still-uncertain-but-increasingly-likely prospect of major cuts to the state’s supply of Colorado River water, the possibility of sustained litigation and the generally dismal hydrology all make it hard for lawmakers to act. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a plan, said Warren Tenney, the executive director of AMWUA.
“It is challenging for legislators to take action when there is so much uncertainty about what is exactly going to happen,” he told us. “And yet, we do know that we’re going to have less Colorado River water. It has become even more clear that reductions to Colorado River water could become quite severe over the next few years. And so we do need to be able to show as a state that we are prepared and do have a plan.”
Griffin speaks
In a written statement, the typically media-averse Griffin said the state “made some progress on water this session, but we also missed several important opportunities because good bills were vetoed or failed to make it across the finish line.”
We wrote a lot about Gail Griffin, and her media avoidance, in the Water Agenda.
She said one missed opportunity was her bill directing WIFA to look to salty, brackish groundwater as a potential source of new water for the state. Hobbs vetoed the bill, writing that it diverts important funding toward “speculative groundwater extraction proposals.”
Another, Griffin said, was a bill modifying permitting rules for stored water recovery wells.
“It would have made it easier for cities to access their banked water, but the Governor’s Office opposed it, leaving cities more dependent on the Arizona Water Banking Authority when times get tough,” she said.
Griffin had some more harsh words for the governor, echoing some of the arguments in the disputes between the state and homebuilders.
“Since 2023, the Governor has treated land, water, and housing policy as leverage for Colorado River negotiations,” she said, referencing the state’s subdivision development moratorium in some areas. “That strategy has failed. Instead of building unity at home and putting Arizona in the strongest possible position with the other basin states, she attacked Arizona’s own stakeholders and sowed division within our state.”
What the state needs, Griffin said, are “policies that increase supply, improve reliability, protect rural economies, and keep Arizona competitive.”
Of course, some water advocates would say that what the state and its waters need is for Griffin to lose an election — or at least her spot as chair and agenda-setter of the House Natural Resources Committee.
“For me, as always, my real hope is that we are in a different makeup of a Legislature next year, so we can actually do something,” Sundareshan said.