JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Colorado River is running dry, and the federal government has proposed big cuts to the amount of water that flows to cities and farms in Arizona. KJZZ's Alex Hager visits the town where those cuts will hit first and hardest.
ALEX HAGER, BYLINE: On the outer edges of the Phoenix metro, you'll find Cave Creek, a town of about 5,000 people where cacti dot the hills above quiet neighborhoods. When it comes to water, about 95% of this town's supply comes from one source, the Colorado River.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER PUMPS HUMMING)
HAGER: It's a baking hot spring day, and blue-green water is flowing through the wide concrete canal that brings Colorado River water here from more than 100 miles away. It's then pumped out of the canal north to Cave Creek.
SHAWN KREUZWIESNER: These three booster pumps are what's providing almost all the water for the town.
HAGER: Shawn Kreuzwiesner runs the utilities department in Cave Creek.
KREUZWIESNER: It is stressful.
HAGER: Right now, federal water managers are proposing cuts to the amount that flows into this canal, and Cave Creek doesn't really pull water from anywhere else.
KREUZWIESNER: I hate to use the term, but we're the - sort of the sharp end of the stick or the spear here. We're the first one's going to feel the impact - is Cave Creek.
HAGER: The town could lose 20, 25 or even 59% of its water. So now there's a scramble to find more fast. And the City of Phoenix wants to help. Max Wilson is one of the city's water managers.
MAX WILSON: I think anything that undermines the confidence that the nation has in sustainable lives here in the valley would be negative for all of us who live here.
HAGER: Phoenix and Cave Creek's other larger neighbors, they're basically worried that people will hear about one little town near Phoenix running out of water and think that the whole metro area is going dry. Maybe then they'll stop moving here and spending their money here, in what the latest census data says is America's fourth fastest growing metro.
WILSON: Everybody, when they move to Arizona, the first question they get from their family is, are they going to run out of water? We need to make sure that doesn't happen. We need to make sure that's not true.
HAGER: City leaders say they got a taste of that phenomenon in 2023 when taps ran dry in the small community of Rio Verde Foothills.
KATHRYN SORENSEN: Even if one small part of the valley of the sun experiences problems, you know, everyone is going to get stuck with that same label.
HAGER: Kathryn Sorensen is with the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. She says what happened in Rio Verde Foothills was an outlier, but that didn't show up in the headlines.
SORENSEN: That could be bad news for our economy. So I think that there is a very sound reason for all of us to hold hands and help each other weather this storm.
HAGER: Here's how Phoenix is helping. Over the years, Cave Creek has been banking a lot of water in underground storage, but it's far away, and piping it back to town would be complicated and expensive. So Phoenix is letting Cave Creek take some of its canal water. In exchange, Phoenix can pull from Cave Creek's stored water. It's a clever solution, but Brad Hill, a water consultant for Cave Creek, says it probably won't work forever. That stored water is a finite supply, and climate change is only making decades of drought worse. The long-term forecast is for things to stay dry.
BRAD HILL: If that surface water goes away, you know, we have five to eight years' worth of alternatives, but we need a long-term solution by then.
HAGER: Hill says all the cheap, easy water in the area has already been taken. And the next steps for Cave Creek and other cities in a pinch will be difficult and expensive. For NPR News, I'm Alex Hager in Cave Creek, Arizona. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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