Tapped out: An Arizona community symbolizes West’s water woes

In the American Southwest, people are having to conserve water as never before – from states wrangling over the Colorado River to one small Arizona community where a key source just dried up.

It was never a secret that the water situation was complicated.

There is no municipal water supply in this 18-square-mile flatland of dirt roads, ranches, and dun-colored homes. Indeed, there is no municipality at all here, which has been part of the attraction for many of the people who have moved to Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated...