Among many bills introduced by Democrats at the Arizona Legislature this session that never got a hearing one would have established a groundwater rights buyback program.
As Arizona looks at dwindling groundwater in many basins across the state and a drier future, the idea would be to allow the state to buy groundwater rights from holders and retire them for good.
Last year, Arizona's neighbors to the north in Nevada did just that. Their state assembly unanimously passed a measure creating a similar program — dubbed the Nevada Voluntary Water Rights Retirement Program. They made the move after trying out a pretty successful pilot program.
Laurel Saito is the Nevada water strategy director for the Nature Conservancy. The Show spoke with her about it, beginning with how the buyback program works there.
Full conversation
LAUREL SAITO: The intention of this program is to incentivize people to retire their groundwater rights. In this — in Nevada, the way the legislation works is it’s going to be permanent retirement, so those water rights cannot be used again, to help address some specific purposes. So in our legislation, we specify that the purposes of retiring the groundwater rights would be to protect the natural resources of the state, address declining levels of groundwater, or address conflicts with existing rights. And the idea is that it’s voluntary, so no one is mandated to retire their groundwater rights.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And in Nevada, it was it was pretty bad, right? Like, there were more rights that had been given out to groundwater than there was actual groundwater, right?
LAUREL SAITO: In some places, that’s the case. And we know that because we know that there are declining groundwater levels in many parts of the state. The Nature Conservancy did do a stressor and threat assessment of groundwater-dependent ecosystems in 2022. We analyzed over 6,000 wells across Nevada and found that almost 40% of them had significantly declining groundwater levels over the last several decades.
And we know that people are having to drill their wells deeper for domestic use, as well as for other types of groundwater use. So those are all indications that in some places, the groundwater is being used unsustainably.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, which is happening all over the West, I think, as we, you know.
LAUREL SAITO: It’s not just a Nevada problem.
LAUREN GILGER: So tell us a little about the the legislative process to get this program passed in Nevada. I mean, I understand it was not easy. It took a couple of tries and a long pilot program.
LAUREL SAITO: Yeah. So we did try this first in 2023, but it didn’t make it through the Legislature that time. But there was a group of us stakeholders that were really in agreement that this was something that we thought could be a useful tool. So between 2023 and 2025, which was our next session, we built the case for groundwater rights retirement, and one of those things was this pilot program that ran with American Rescue Plan Act funds that were available. We retired over 20,000 acre-feet of groundwater rights, and we had more demand for that program than we had funds available. So —
LAUREN GILGER: Wow, OK.
LAUREL SAITO: We could use that to demonstrate to the Legislature that there is interest in this, we can successfully retire groundwater rights, and you know, this could be a useful tool going forward.
LAUREN GILGER: So you did get it through the Legislature eventually with some, you know, adjustments. How effective has it been so far? How effective do you think it could be in conserving groundwater?
LAUREL SAITO: So one of the things that we had to do or that we did in 2025 was that we did not ask for any funds for the program. And that’s partly because in 2023, that’s where the bill got held up. So we established the program, but we had no funding for it.
So what we’re working on now is trying to find funding for the program and also to kind of set the guidelines to make sure that the program will, when enacted, will actually retire actual water use. You know, water rights that are being used.
LAUREN GILGER: How do you value water rights? Like, some are not used at all, right? You’d call them like paper rights. But some are are so-called wet water rights, right? And and are more applicable. But how do you decide how much they’re worth?
LAUREL SAITO: That’s a great question, and one that we get asked a lot. And it’s a little bit challenging, because we want to be doing something that’s fair and equitable, but the problem is that there haven’t been a whole lot of these kinds of transactions that have occurred. And so there’s not a lot of data available on what is a fair market value and things like that.
And it’s going to be very dependent on your location and the kind of situation you’re in. So, like, I don’t think there is just one value for groundwater rights across all of Nevada. It is going to depend on where you are and what the situation is.
LAUREN GILGER: Sure. I know some folks are concerned about, you know, I guess the same kind of concerns you would have if you’re, for example, fallowing fields or something like that, which we pay farmers to do sometimes as well to conserve water. Land becoming dusty, weedy, you know, things like that. Are you worried about or have you seen from the pilot program any effects like that?
LAUREL SAITO: Yeah, so that is another question that comes up a lot when we talk about this program. And the pilot program gave those who retired groundwater rights an extra $50 per acre-foot for them to implement some sort of land management to try to avoid this problem of dust and weeds and pests.
And then they have done a little bit of post-evaluation to kind of go out and see if people have been trying to do that, and it’s been a little bit of a mixed bag. I mean, some folks have actually been trying to put in a cover crop or, you know, do things to deal with that on the lands that they retired. Another thing that we thought about is in places where you have an agricultural community that would like to stay in agriculture, when we retire these groundwater rights, we are possibly going to lose a lot of land out of agriculture.
So we looked at agrivoltaics as a possible alternative in those areas to kind of keep the the community more of an agricultural community. And agrivoltaics is the integration of solar photovoltaic systems with agricultural production. So that’s an alternative that might be possible in some of these areas.
LAUREN GILGER: So let me ask you then, Laurel, lastly here, about the big-picture potential impact. I mean, as we’re looking at a drier future across the West, as we’re looking at the Colorado River being, you know, overused, everyone’s going to have to take cuts. We’re looking for lots of ways to conserve water, groundwater being one of them.
Do you think this is a really promising thing that other states do you think should look at in terms of trying to conserve water in the future?
LAUREL SAITO: Yeah, I think so. ... We like to say that we want to have a bunch of different tools in the toolbox. When it comes to water, it’s very complicated. And most of the time, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen when there’s just a single solution that’s going to solve the whole problem. ... So we’re looking for different options that that people can have for how to address these overused issues.
We like to say this is a tool that provides a little bit softer landing to like running out of groundwater completely. Which, you know, people have built their livelihoods on using this water, and when the groundwater runs out or the well runs dry, that’s it.
And with groundwater rights retirement, this this type of a program, it might give people an opportunity to be a little more proactive about stopping the groundwater use and getting compensated for it so that you can transition to doing something else. ... So we like to say it’s a it’s a less abrupt than just running out of water.
LAUREN GILGER: Less abrupt, for sure. All right. Well, I appreciate your insight. That is Laurel Saito, Nevada water strategy director for the Nature Conservancy, joining us. Laurel, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate this.
LAUREL SAITO: Thank you.
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