In the 24-month report released by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in 2016, the bureau predicted a more than 50 percent chance of a water shortage in 2018. This August, the Bureau of Reclamation report reduced that projection to zero.

Drawing groundwater from near a stream can suck that stream dry. In turn, using all the water in streams and rivers lessens their ability to replenish the aquifers beneath them. Yet California and Arizona -- the two states water experts say are facing the most severe water crises -- continue to count and regulate groundwater and surface water as if they were entirely separate.

If you want to glimpse the future of a city or state, all you need to do is look at how it’s managing its water supply.

House Speaker Andy Tobin said water legislation is at the top of Arizona’s priority list for next year, but a solution to the state’s impending water crisis is as elusive as ever.

With state finances on the sunny side, cities and towns hope to convince lawmakers to relieve some of the budget pressures on local governments.

And it appears legislators are listening.

The 100th anniversary of Salt River Project’s Theodore Roosevelt Dam this month put the exclamation point on how important effective water management is to life in the Valley of the Sun.

The Department of Mines and Minerals, a state agency that's been around since the 1930s, will shut down for good Friday due to a lack of funding, its director said.

Department of Water Resources Director Herb Guenther has been given his walking papers, and Assistant Director Sandra Fabritz-Whitney of Water Management Division has been named as acting department director.

A vote on settling the Navajo Nation's water rights in the lower Colorado River basin will have to wait for another day. The Tribal Council on Wednesday tabled a bill that would have given the tribe 31,000 acre-feet of water a year from the Colorado River, the unappropriated surface flows from the Little Colorado River and nearly unlimited access to two aquifers beneath the reservation.