Amazon's $20 Million Colorado River Pledge Covers a Fraction of Its Own Water Use

Amazon announced this week that it will invest $20 million in a new Colorado River Basin Collaborative, a coalition of companies including Aldi and The Coca-Cola Foundation aiming to raise $100 million over two years for conservation projects across the river basin, according to Amazon's announcement. So far, participating companies have voluntarily committed more than $32 million toward that goal, the company said.

Some of Amazon's money is earmarked for specific fixes rather than general funding: $2.4 million with the agricultural technology company Arable to improve irrigation efficiency on tribal farmland in the Lower Colorado basin, and $2.2 million to expand leak detection and repair work in Orange County, California, according to reporting from KJZZ. Sarah Porter of Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy, cited by KJZZ's Hewes, noted that given the scale of the river's supply-demand imbalance, Amazon's contribution