If you joined us for our Water, Power & Growth event in Chandler a couple weeks ago, thank you for being part of one of the most important conversations shaping Arizona’s future.
A special thank you to Sarah Porter from the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, along with Maria Naff and Matthew Laudone from Salt River Project, for sharing their expertise and insight.
As I opened the summit, I asked everyone to picture Arizona about 100 years ago, before the Hoover Dam.
In the early 1900s, this wasn’t a growth market. If you lived here, life was about survival. The Colorado River was unpredictable. Floods would wipe things out. Droughts would shut things down. Reliable water didn’t exist, and without it, large-scale development wasn’t even part of the conversation.
In 1926, Arizona’s population was under 400,000 people. Phoenix had only around 30,000 residents.
Then came the 1930s.
In the middle of the Great Depression, thousands of workers, guided by courageous leaders, visionary thinkers, and brilliant engineers and designers, came together to build the Hoover Dam, one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in American history.
And everything changed.
The Hoover Dam didn’t just control water; it created certainty. It generated power. It made agriculture scalable. It gave businesses and communities the confidence to grow.
Fast forward to today…
Arizona now has more than 7.6 million residents, with over 5 million living in the Phoenix metro area alone. Roughly 80% of Arizona’s population depends on Colorado River water systems that began with projects like the Hoover Dam.
Arizona wasn’t lucky. It was engineered. It was planned. And it was built by people willing to think decades ahead.
Today, we are standing at another critical moment in Arizona’s growth story.
We’re experiencing extraordinary growth with new development, new industries and new opportunities, but all of it still depends on the same two forces: water and power.
One thing became very clear throughout the summit: growth does not happen by accident. It depends on infrastructure, planning, and long-term certainty.
Here were some of the biggest takeaways from the summit:
- The Colorado River was over-allocated from the beginning, and today’s shortages are being intensified by reduced snowpack, evaporation, and long-term basin uncertainty.
- Approximately 72% of Colorado River water usage goes toward agriculture.
- Long-term water solutions being explored include:
- Ag-to-Urban legislation with agri-tech modifications to our farms
- Advanced water purification
- Expanded SRP storage projects
- Groundwater reserves and exchanges
- Salt River Project is forecasting approximately 6.6% annual demand growth, driven heavily by data centers and population growth.
- Phoenix is now second only to Virginia in data center growth.
- SRP expects it may need to double or triple its resource capacity over the next decade through:
- Renewables
- New generation sources
- Expanded transmission infrastructure
- Smarter energy management programs
For brokers, investors, developers, and business owners, water and power are no longer background assumptions; they are front-line deal issues. Infrastructure certainty now directly impacts land development, industrial site selection, financing, underwriting, data center growth, and long-term investment strategy.
Arizona’s growth story is incredible, but it is not guaranteed.
The real question isn’t can we grow, it’s how we manage that growth from here. And the answer is built on water, powered by infrastructure, and dependent on the decisions being made right now.
Hani Aldulaimi
Managing Director
