Project Hourglass

Arizona’s growth depends on water. Project Hourglass is the Canada Arizona Business Council’s initiative to support the people and institutions making long-term water decisions for Arizona, the Colorado River watershed and the wider Sonoran Desert region — through cooperation, private-sector leadership and access to capital.

The top of the hourglass is full of solutions. The constraint has never been a shortage of ideas. It is the time, the decisions and the capital needed to move them through. The hourglass has been turned over.

What has changed

In 2026 the federal government set the operating framework that will govern the Colorado River through 2036, after the seven basin states were unable to reach agreement among themselves. The framework keeps the system running. It does not close the gap between what the river is expected to deliver and what it actually delivers.

For Arizona, that means the work of building water reliability now happens primarily here — in our cities, our utilities, our farms and our industries — with new supply from outside the state as a parallel, longer-term effort.

Three phases

Phase 1 — Use what we have, better

Reducing water lost from aging systems, modernizing codes and pricing, and expanding water reuse. Reuse matters most because it is the one supply that does not rise and fall with the river. This phase involves water utilities, cities and counties, businesses, mining, agriculture, tribal nations, universities and consumers.

Phase 2 — Store it, treat it, and stop wasting it

Recharging and banking water underground, developing brackish groundwater, improving agricultural irrigation, capturing stormwater, and renewing the pipes and plants already in the ground. Arizona’s underground storage system is the most developed in the basin and remains one of its greatest advantages.

Phase 3 — Bring in new supply

Developing new, sustainable supply from outside Arizona’s current Colorado River position. Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority is running a competitive process under the state’s Long-Term Water Augmentation Fund, and private consortia — including CABC members — have submitted proposals covering seawater desalination in partnership with Mexico, groundwater storage and exchange arrangements with California, and advanced water treatment near the international border.

Most of these work through exchange rather than new long-distance pipelines: water produced or stored elsewhere is traded against Colorado River allocations, so that Arizona receives water through infrastructure that already exists.