Water officials in Arizona say they are prepared to lose about one-fifth of the water the state gets from the Colorado River in what could be the first mandated cut.
The federal government recently projected the first-ever shortage of river water that supplies millions of people in the U.S. West and Mexico. Arizona stands to lose more than any other state in the Colorado River basin. That's because Arizona agreed long ago to be the first in line for cuts in exchange for funding a canal system to deliver the water to the state's major metropolitan areas.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project are expected to expand on the situation in a public presentation Thursday.
