We’ve written a lot about conflict in the Colorado River basin — conflict between states, between states and tribes, between states and the federal government, farmers and cities and more.
But what about a conflict of river bloggers?
Anyone following water policy in the state is likely familiar with these two organizations: the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
The former is the top water agency in Arizona. Its longtime director, Tom Buschatzke, basically has control over the appropriation, distribution and regulation of much of the state's surface and groundwater. The latter is one of the top sources for academic analysis of southwestern water, especially the Colorado River.
You’ll see representatives from both entities appear in newspapers, social media and panels; serve on advisory groups, appear before the Legislature, relay expert information to the press and politicians and generally help shape the discourse of water in Arizona.
For the most part, they march to the beat of the same drum, calling for conservation, consensus-based governance, responsible development (though ADWR, naturally, is at the heart of more political controversies).
They also both have blogs. And blogging, as we can attest, can make you, well, a little testy.
So too can the looming crisis on the Colorado River — a future of climate change-driven mega-drought conditions, plummeting reservoir levels, emergency cuts and years of failed interstate negotiations.
So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these two august institutions of Arizona water policy have occasionally found each other at odds in the public forum.
That’s what happened earlier this month, when ADWR published a post titled “Rebuttal to the Kyl Center’s May 1 ‘Arizona Colorado River Update’.”
The headline caught our attention, and after a little poking around online, it turns out this isn’t the first time ADWR has published a “rebuttal” to the Kyl Center, either. Indeed, of three posts published on the agency’s “perspectives” page, two are directed at the Kyl Center.
This time around, the subject was the recently announced Colorado River deal between Arizona, California and Nevada — not yet official and not exactly a substitute for the long-awaited, long-term basin-wide deal, but one that state officials believe can provide some relief to the strained river system without completely drying up low-priority users.
“Nothing against light-hearted, rib-poking humor,” begins ADWR’s post. “Heaven knows the bruising negotiations over Post-2026 Operations on the Colorado River system in which we’ve been engaged for almost three years could use a few laughs. But humor at the expense of accuracy isn’t helpful.”
ADWR was responding to a recent newsletter from the Kyl Center that discussed the three-state deal and the possibility of a forthcoming El Niño system that could bring wet weather to the southwest.
The Kyl Center’s post, published just before the official release of the three-state deal, is full of glib humor (and plenty of references to “Mad Max” and other movies to illustrate their points) that befits the relatively cynical world of southwestern water.
The writers call the possibility of a seven-state deal an “illusion” that is “long gone.” Referencing a philosophical idea called Hobson’s Choice — in which, of multiple choices, only one is truly offered — the post says that “a three-state Lower Basin deal, if it emerges, might be better than nothing, depending on what’s in it, and then again, it might not.”
The 1954 British romcom “Hobson’s Choice”
The question, the post continues, “is whether riding the deal will be better than walking alone. Certainly, it won’t be the horse we were hoping to ride into battle, but taking it might be better than being a foot soldier.”
Although ADWR’s rebuttal says the department takes issue with the post’s accuracy, its real problem seems to be with the Kyl Center’s tone.
To the remark about a seven-state deal, the agency responded, somewhat optimistically:
“None of the three Lower Basin negotiators has given up on reaching a 7-state agreement, but the three states have stepped up to protect the river in the near term in the absence of any parallel actions in the Upper Basin.”
And why wouldn’t the three-state deal be better than nothing, the agency asks, given the extent of the sacrifices the three states are proposing.
“It is unhelpful in the extreme for the Center to pre-judge that a proposal that had not yet daylighted ‘might not’ pass muster. Based, exactly, on what?”
The previous time the two organizations came to verbal blows was June of 2025, when the Kyl Center published a Colorado River update post that dinged California and Arizona for potentially using more water in 2025 — based on then-current water orders — than in 2024 by about 200,000 acre-feet.
“It is unsurprising that, with only one sentence devoted to such a complex topic, crucial context is lost,” ADWR responded. “The post misses the remarkable, much bigger, story entirely: Arizona and California were responsible for unprecedented levels of conservation in the two years prior to 2025.“
Bathtub rings in Lake Powell, showing how far water levels have dropped in recent years. Courtesy: U.S. Geological Survey
To suggest that the states are using more water than in past years “based on water orders, which are traditionally adjusted downward by water users, relative to the verified use in 2024 is glib,” it continues.
Almost a year before that exchange, the Kyl Center published a report titled “Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River” that takes a largely critical view of a program called Intentionally Created Surplus, which allows certain users to bank water in Lake Mead.
The program provides important “operational flexibility,” the report says, but should not be taken to be just as good as permanent reductions in demand that boost levels of “system water” in the reservoirs.
“The creation of System Water — unassigned water in Lake Mead — bolsters water levels to the benefit of everyone in the priority system,” the report reads. “Yet what rational actor would invest in schemes to conserve water that results (sic) in System Water when instead he can invest in the same activities and receive a class of water protected from priority system constraints and loss during shortage?”
This didn’t sit well with the state, which lambasted the report as containing “baseless accusations and little substance.”
“The paper asserts that delivery of Assigned Water results in ‘a lower water level, and potentially deeper shortage condition, than would otherwise have been the case,’” the response says. “However, the paper provides no data or analysis to demonstrate that the delivery of water (which would not have been there but for the earlier conservation) actually results in lower reservoirs or deeper shortages than would have occurred absent any conservation at all.”
Untangling the impacts of ICS — a program that would be continued under the three-state deal — is too tall an order for today’s newsletter. And, across the three responses, the state certainly has some points — it and its neighbors have done a lot to conserve Colorado River water, though more is certainly needed.
But so too does the Kyl Center. The unprecedentedly bad hydrology of the moment seems to merit a certain amount of cynicism. And, as regular purveyors of glib commentary ourselves, we tend to think that the government can handle some pointed remarks.
Can’t these two titans of water policy get along?
Maybe, as the too-online kids say, everyone just needs to go outside and touch some grass — or better yet, a xeriscaped yard.
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No love lost: The battle between the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Recorder Justin Heap escalated this week as the supervisors signed off on using ballot drop boxes and emergency vote centers. Heap’s lawyer said that amounts to “ballot harvesting” and would violate state law, the Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen reports.
“We are stuck in this hamster wheel of the 2020 election. That is the basis of it,” Republican Supervisor Thomas Galvin said. “Over and over and over again. Someone has to call out the recorder and say, ‘Cut it out.’”
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Gloating won’t help: When lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs swept opioid settlement funds from Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office to fill a void they’d created in the state budget two years ago, Mayes called it illegal and sued. A judge said not so fast, since it wasn’t exactly clear how the state planned to use those swept funds. Now, a new report from the Auditor General’s Office shows the state isn’t keeping proper records to show the swept funds were being used for proper purposes, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. If Arizona improperly uses the funds — which lawmakers are attempting to sweep again this year — it could put more than $1 billion that the state received in the settlement in jeopardy.
“Told you so,” Mayes said of the report.
“A person I’ve known for a long time,” is — technically speaking — an accurate way to describe your own son.
But President Donald Trump’s explanation of why he might not attend the wedding of his son, Donald Jr., was uniquely Trumpian.
The president, who went golfing last Saturday, said Jr. “would like me to go” to the wedding this Memorial Day weekend.
But his war in Iran is keeping him pretty busy.