Gov. Katie Hobbs and Democratic state lawmakers are pushing a plan to protect rural groundwater — and some local Republican officials are on board.
It’s a rare moment of bipartisanship in the name of giving rural communities a say in managing local groundwater as out-of-state corporations are pumping finite supplies. But a similar effort introduced last session ended with partisan divisions.
This year’s legislation would establish five protected Rural Groundwater Management Areas that would be run by local councils with the power to implement conservation programs.
Prescott Mayor Phil Goode, Prescott mayor and one of the Republicans who backs the idea, joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning there, mayor. Thanks for coming on.
PHIL GOODE: Well, good morning, Lauren. It's a pleasure to be here and anything I can do to help support some rural groundwater management policies to protect our rural communities, counties, and towns, etc. I'm I'm all aboard for it.
GILGER: Right. So let's talk about why that is. Like Prescott is under an active management area. It's been regulated. You can't like pump without any end there. But, but what's the groundwater situation look like in many of the rural areas around you? Why are you concerned about conservation here?
GOODE: Well, I've been involved in rural groundwater policy establishments as the chairman of the Northern Arizona Municipal Water Users Association. And I've also been on the public policy committee for the Central or the Citizens Water Advocacy group up here and was one of the original members of the rural Groundwater Working Group.
So all of these groups recognize that there are many basins and subbasins throughout the state that are severely being overpumped and are in risk of subsidence and fracturing in the ground, so we need some protection for those areas. We see the rapid development of major industries that are high water users in the Phoenix area and down in Pima County, and they're constantly looking for more water to be able to support that development.
But I think the people that live in these rural communities have just as much right to protect. The water resources they have so that they can manage their own growth and development for the present and the future.
GILGER: There's been a lot of talk, a lot of attention on Saudi Arabian company that's been pumping groundwater here in Arizona for alfalfa to feed cows in the Middle East. Lots of negative press there. Are you concerned about foreign companies like that being able to pump groundwater legally and pretty much with no end in, in these parts of our state?
GOODE: Well, that's just it. That's the reason they're here is that we have very few restrictions for foreign entities like that to come in and buy up vast amounts of acreage and start using them for inappropriate products that even their own countries won't allow them to grow.
And we see that not only for foreign entities but even other states. We've had state companies in California, for example, that are coming in and buying vast amounts of acreage to be able to pump almost unrestricted. So that's the real problem is that we don't have the regulations or the restrictions to be able to manage that very, very valuable state resource.
GILGER: Right. There is another way that groundwater can be managed. Right, an active management area like it exists in Prescott. It's not usually used in rural parts of the state, but the governor has kind of threatened to implement more of those AMAs in rural parts of the state if this bill does not pass. What's your, what's your concern there? Are you concerned about that?
GOODE: Well, I am. I mean, even the AMAs have very weak restrictions. The Prescott AMA, which we're right in the center of, is one of the worst performing AMA's in the whole state. Our groundwater levels continue to drop and deteriorate. We have a number of, we've counted over 500 exempt wells in the county that have gone dry because there's no enforcement and there's no penalties for not achieving safe yield.
So this rural Groundwater Management Act actually does a much better job of being able to provide enforcement and expectations in a balanced way so that all the major users, whether it's agriculture, industrial, municipal, etc. have a seat at the table so that they can agree to manage these areas much more effectively.
As you know, the Wilcox AMA that was just created, they would like to be in a rural groundwater management district like this bill proposes because they would have the ability to have a more predictable future for even their wine growing areas down in their Wilcox area.
GILGER: This is a Democratic bill. You are a Republican. Do you see this as a partisan issue?
GOODE: I don't, and I made that very clear at the press conference. As I said, I'm a conservative and I'm an active Republican. I've been a state committeeman and a precinct committeeman for the party. I was the first vice chair of the Yavapai County Republican Committee up here, so I've been heavily involved, but this is a nonpartisan issue, as I said at that conference.
There's no Democrat water. There's no Republican water. There's only Arizona state water and all these parties got to get together and solve this problem before it's unsolvable. We've got the Ranegras Basin over there in La Paz County that's in the process of collapsing. Once that basin, that underground aquifer collapses, it can't come back. It's not a balloon, you know. It has to be protected before that happens.
