Highlights
- Cave Creek draws roughly 95% of its water from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project, leaving it among Arizona's most exposed municipalities.
- Federal officials are expected to release a Record of Decision with specific cut figures after publishing the Final Environmental Impact Study on Friday.
- The town is weighing Bartlett Dam expansion, Harquahala Basin groundwater, and exchange agreements with neighboring cities as replacement sources.
- Water Resource consultant Brad Hill warns that any forward-looking supply will cost materially more than what Arizona communities pay today.
Federal water officials are preparing to release a Record of Decision that will assign specific Colorado River cut figures to Arizona municipalities, and Cave Creek, which routes roughly 95% of its supply through the Central Arizona Project, is already working through its options.
The town hired water resource consultant Brad Hill to guide planning. Hill has outlined three candidate alternatives: an expansion tied to Bartlett Dam and the Salt River Project, access to Harquahala Basin groundwater, and water exchanges with other cities. Cave Creek has already entered exchange agreements with other municipalities, according to the AZFamily report.
Hill says the economics of any replacement supply are the central variable. Each option has to be evaluated on price per acre-foot, whether the volume is short-term or long-term, physical availability, and the logistics of moving water to Cave Creek's treatment plant. "All the cheap, easy water has already been developed in Arizona," Hill said. "Anything looking forward is going to be much more expensive, or we anticipate it to be much more expensive than the water that people are using today."
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy, said the pending cuts will not immediately leave cities dry, but that single-source dependence is no longer viable. Porter said cities should never manage water so that every drop in their portfolio is consumed each year.
Cave Creek's exposure stems from geography. Hill noted the town sits against the basin boundary, which historically made surface water from the Colorado the path of least resistance. The Central Arizona Project aqueduct, authorized in 1968 and substantially complete by 1993, runs approximately 336 miles from Lake Havasu to southwest of Tucson and was designed to serve nearly one million acres of irrigated agricultural land across Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties.
Cave Creek has not settled on a replacement source. The hard numbers cities need to pursue alternatives will come from the federal Record of Decision and updated operating guidelines, both still pending.
Why haven't cities committed to alternatives yet?
The Record of Decision and federal operating guidelines have not yet been released. Those documents will carry the specific cut volumes assigned to each Arizona water user, giving municipalities the figures needed to size and finance alternative supply contracts. Until those numbers are public, committing to a particular alternative carries significant pricing and volume risk.
The Record of Decision and operating guidelines are expected to follow the Final Environmental Impact Study released Friday.
Sources
Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.
- AZ Family (3TV/CBS5) retrieved 04/08/2026 05:18
- usbr.gov retrieved 04/08/2026 05:18
Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 04/08/2026 05:18. Every claim traces to a source.
