Following a Monday meeting in Salt Lake City, Colorado River water users are pledging to move past two weeks of public fighting between an Arizona agency and four states that divert water from the river. The Arizona utility — the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD) — said at the meeting that it regretted having used rhetoric that inflamed tensions.

In April, negotiators from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming wrote a pointed letter to CAWCD, accusing the agency of manipulating its supply and demand forecasts to take more water from the overtaxed river system, which provides water for more than 40 million people in seven states and two countries. CAWCD argued that it had been operating within the rules.

The Colorado River system, which is split into an Upper Basin and a Lower Basin, has two main reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Southern Nevada gets about 90 percent of its drinking water from Lake Mead, the reservoir about 30 miles outside of Las Vegas that also stores water for Arizona, California and Mexico. A top official for the Southern Nevada Water Authority said last week that the recent dispute should be taken seriously. The water authority is also ready to move on a drought plan to stabilize declining elevations at Lake Mead. A related fight between CAWCD and the Arizona Department of Water Resources has stalled those negotiations.

On Monday, the agency apologized for its rhetoric and said it hoped to begin to repair its frayed relationship with the state agency, an arm of the governor’s office, to work on the drought plan.

“CAWCD regrets that intra-Arizona issues have impacted other parties in the Colorado River basin,” a CAWCD spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Specifically, CAWCD regrets using language and representations that were insensitive to Upper Basin concerns, and resolves to have a more respectful and transparent dialogue in the future. As a result of the meeting, CAWCD has committed to beginning a fresh conversation within Arizona, including with ADWR and other stakeholders, to chart a path forward for an effective Drought Contingency Plan.”

The meeting was less an attempt to resolve the conflict and more a chance to start talks.

“Our objective for this meeting was not to resolve all issues but, rather, to identify a path forward for our talks,” James Eklund, who represents the state of Colorado in the negotiations, said Tuesday in a statement. “Despite these encouraging messages, the jury is still out.”

He said that any progress forward would be in the district’s actions.

It’s unclear how much of an impact the meeting will have in solving the issue that upset the Upper Basin enough to send a rare letter that singled out CAWCD. While CAWCD said it regretted its rhetoric, the agency was quiet about whether it would change its strategy.