The Arizona Water Defenders (AWA) made a valiant effort in collecting signatures calling for a November election to determine whether an Active Management Area (AMA) should be established in the Willcox Groundwater Basin. Now comes the hard part.
Since passage of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, no other group has taken advantage of the law allowing for an election to establish an AMA. Kudos to them, but the AWA now finds itself in uncharted waters. While many homeowners facing the growing risk of wells drying up and a few farmers/ranchers have voiced support, the opposition to such a measure will be well funded.
The Cochise County Farm & Livestock Bureau has already come out to oppose the measure. The organization has sent out a brochure reminding people what an AMA will do. The brochure lists the monitoring of wells, gallons per day requirements for water providers, halting the expansion of irrigated acreage, etc... The organization did make an incorrect statement in that it claimed irrigated acreage could not expand beyond what farmers irrigated in the late 1970s. That was true when the legislature passed the act in 1980, but subsequent AMAs would grandfather acreage farmed five years previous to the filing of new petitions.
Anti-AMA brochure from the Cochise County Farm & Livestock Bureau
While the Willcox area has experienced overdraft issues for years, farmers remain suspicious of a one-size-fits-all regulation emanating from the state capitol. To that end, Rep. Regina Cobb’s (R-Kingman) Rural Management Area remains a preferable alternative. Such legislation would allow the Board of Supervisors in an affected county to officially adopt conservation measures for a “basin at risk” after receiving input from a local advisory committee along with input from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Without the mandated measures that come with an AMA, local groundwater users including representatives from the agricultural community, local government, mining, real estate, a conservation member, etc. . . . come together to propose solutions that make sense to their unique area. This isn’t communism, folks. This is a sensible solution to a long-standing problem.
Chelsea McGuire, the Arizona Farm Bureau’s government relations director, has strongly opposed groundwater regulation because she doesn’t want local governments involved in the decision-making process. In an Arizona Republic article from earlier this year, she stated that local governing bodies “change quickly and are often easily swayed by a loud minority, which could lead to uncertainty and ever-changing expectations for water users.” Bills to safeguard groundwater in rural Arizona face opposition (azcentral.com)
Chelsea McGuire
Photo by Arizona Farm Bureau
“Only a balance of power between local government, state government, and state agencies will be effective to ensure fair and consistent regulatory measures,” McGuire said. (Ibid)
The problem is that the Arizona Farm Bureau has consistently opposed any measure that would set up any type of regulatory framework designed at the local level. To date, the Arizona Farm Bureau has not seriously proposed any solutions of their own, or someone would have already introduced a Farm Bureau-inspired bill. I should know. I introduced several such bills back in the ’90s when I chaired the Committee on Natural Resources Agriculture and the Environment.
On average, wells in the Willcox area have declined in a decade’s time a little over three feet per year. Some wells have declined as much as eight feet per year during that time. (Ibid)With larger out-of-state agricultural operations putting a strain on groundwater-dependent areas in rural Arizona the Farm Bureau needs to recognize the danger it puts its long-standing small to medium-sized members in.
In the meantime, the Arizona Water Defenders’ efforts will probably receive strong opposition from the Arizona Farm Bureau, home builders, and others who benefit from this unregulated free-for-all.