American rivers and streams provide water supply to two-thirds of Americans, and the Colorado River is among the biggest lifelines for the resource in the U.S.

Online giant Amazon announced it is contributing $20 million toward water conservation projects in the Colorado River basin. The contribution is part of a new cross-industry coalition called the Colorado River Basin Collaborative, which hopes to raise $100 million toward perhaps the largest corporate water conservation effort for a single U.S. watershed.

Amazon is joining the Climate Pledge’s Water Resilience Coalition which aims at contributing $32 million to the Colorado River Basin Collaborative including the tech company donation.

“Through the Climate Pledge, we've seen what happens when companies tackle a problem together: progress accelerates. We're bringing that same model to the Colorado River because water and climate are deeply connected,” Kara Hurt, chief sustainability officer at Amazon, said in a statement. “What sets this apart is also quick action—starting now through 2028, the coalition will deploy funding into projects that are already vetted and ready to go.”

The Colorado River has its headwaters in Colorado then winds through the southwest U.S. including through the Grand Canyon. It sustains a region of more than 40 million people, dozens of native tribes and both industrial and natural ecosystems through its water.

Rainfall and snowmelt ebbs and flows, but the Colorado basin has been locked in a three-decade “superdrought” made more critical by rising temperatures. The average flow of the Colorado River has declined 20% since 2000, according to the Nature Conservancy and other environmental watchdogs.

The river's largest reservoirs are below 30% capacity, and the gap between supply and demand is roughly 1 trillion gallons per year, reads the release by Amazon.

The decreased water supply threatens agriculture as well as Lake Mead, which is the primary water source for Las Vegas. Amazon is investing $2.4 million in irrigation efficiency technologies through a company called Arable.

The project uses AWS-powered sensors that give farmers real-time data on when their crops need water, helping them draw significantly less water from Lake Mead, Las Vegas’ primary water source. The project is expected to save approximately 238 million gallons of water per year.