Committee rejects emergency bill requiring municipalities to notify customers about CAP-loss cost estimates
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Summary
House Bill 4100 would have required municipal CAP recipients to estimate and notify customers, by April 15, 2026, about the per-acre-foot cost of alternative supplies if CAP allocations were fully lost. Committee members, cities and water providers said the required estimates would be speculative and the timeline impractical; the bill failed 2–6 with 2 absent.
Representative Collin sponsored House Bill 4100 as an emergency measure requiring municipal CAP water recipients to estimate and publish the total cost per acre-foot of securing, treating and delivering an alternative water supply if leased or acquired CAP water were no longer available, and to provide public notice by April 15, 2026. The sponsor said the goal was to alert suburban voters about the fiscal consequences of significant Colorado River cuts and prompt public engagement.
Opposition and technical concerns: Municipal providers and the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association said they could not prepare defensible, non-speculative estimates within the short statutory deadline and that issuing guesses could cause unnecessary alarm. Barry Aarons (AMWA) and Dean Miller (Arizona Water) both said the information requested would be speculative, potentially misleading and operationally infeasible in the time allowed.
Debate and vote: Committee members raised concerns about triggering public panic, undermining negotiation strategy for Colorado River talks, and the short time frame for accurate reporting. Several members said they supported the underlying transparency idea but not as an emergency measure or with the timeline proposed; the bill failed in committee with a vote of 2 ayes, 6 nays, 2 absent.
