Key Points:

• Arizona Farm Bureau backs GOP water management bill

• Measures supported by governor stalled before reaching her

• Goal is to reduce groundwater pumping in rural Arizona

Lawmakers are once again attempting to craft a groundwater management policy that preserves the state’s groundwater supply in rural areas while appeasing the interests of a wide variety of stakeholders.

Legislators have introduced multiple measures this session, with only one of the bills advancing through the legislative process.

Senate Bill 1520 would allow the creation of Basin Management Areas which would impose a series of restrictions intended to preserve groundwater in Gila Bend, Hualapai Valley and the Willcox Groundwater Basin. The Willcox Active Management Area, established to preserve the existing groundwater supply in the Willcox Basin, would be converted into a Basin Management Area.

That bill, sponsored by Sen. Tim Dunn, R-Yuma, passed the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water and Rules committees last month and is waiting to be heard in the House Committee of Whole.

Another set of twin bills introduced earlier this session by Sen. Priya Sundareshan, D-Tucson, and Rep. Chris Mathis, D-Tucson, would also enact groundwater preservation measures in certain rural areas but never received a hearing despite support from Gov. Katie Hobbs and a group of Republican rural lawmakers.

The bills, Senate Bill 1425 and House Bill 2714, would establish Rural Groundwater Management Areas (RGMAs) in the Gila Bend Basin, Hualapai Valley Basin, Ranegras Plain Basin, and San Simon Sub-basin and establish certain requirements and restrictions for groundwater pumping in those areas. Under this legislation, the Willcox Active Management Area would be converted to a RGMA.

Legislators have been working for years to establish groundwater regulations for rural areas, but potential legislation has been hindered by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, environmentalists, the agricultural community and municipalities who disagree on the restrictions needed to preserve groundwater in mostly unregulated rural areas.

The debates primarily centered on how much groundwater pumping needs to be reduced to protect the aquifers in rural basins and the desire for regulatory structures that increase local control in those areas. 

Some stakeholders have blamed committee chairs for not allowing bills to be heard and denying those bills an opportunity to advance through the Legislature. 

“Most of the people at the Legislature have sort of ceded their understanding of the issue to whoever their perceived expert is in that body,” said Nick Ponder, senior vice president for governmental affairs at public affairs firm HighGround, Inc.

Some view Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, chair of the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water Committee, as one of those experts and have blamed her for not hearing several groundwater bills over the years.

Griffin’s office didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but she wrote in a 2023 op-ed that the groundwater management proposals she received up to that point were “bad” policies that would create additional layers of government, appoint unelected bureaucrats to groundwater control districts and dictate to landowners what they could and could not do on their private property.

Griffin voted for SB1520 when it passed through her committee on March 25, although she and Dunn acknowledged more work needed to be done to refine the bill.

“I’m continuing to agree to be at the table and work with others, not just with both sides of the aisle, but with the different industries and the residential people as well,” Griffin said at the hearing.

John Boelts, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, said Dunn’s proposal strikes a balance between maintaining conservation efforts, addressing the needs of the farming, ranching, industrial and mining industries, and preserving local control.

Boelts said some previous proposals, such as Mathis and Sundareshan’s bills, called for groundwater reductions that could hurt the agricultural industry.

For example, the two Democrats’ legislation calls for up to a 40% reduction in groundwater pumping over 40 years while Dunn’s bill would reduce pumping by 10% — 1% each year — within 10 years of the formation of a Basin Management Area.

“There are some people who unrealistically view that agriculture and other industries can just cut their water use down to nothing and that we’ll still have thriving economies in the rural parts of Arizona,” Boelts said.

Critics say the bill doesn’t do enough to reduce groundwater pumping and would continue to benefit large farming corporations.

“I think, fundamentally, it has been hard to get people to seriously negotiate because the status quo is hurting Arizona residents, but it benefits big farming corporations,” Sundareshan said. “Large industrial agriculture benefits from the status quo, being able to pump as much water as they need without worrying about long-term sustainability.”

Although lawmakers and stakeholders may disagree on certain issues, Ponder said residents in rural areas who usually oppose big government actually want politicians to reach a solution that’ll protect groundwater levels in those areas.

“It becomes partisan at the state Capitol,” he said. “It’s very non-partisan outside of the state Capitol.”