The federal government's demand that Colorado River water users rapidly scale back water use to stabilize plunging reservoir levels has touched off debate about which states should conserve the most, and at what cost.
Headwaters states, whose snow supplies most of the river but who have yet to use the share they were promised a century ago, signaled their position this week that most cuts must come from users downstream of Lake Powell, including in Arizona.
At the same time, Yuma farmers began discussing a plan that would ask the state to compensate them handsomely for a major but temporary reduction in their use, perhaps on hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland...