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Hualapai Valley lawsuit tests Arizona’s authority to protect vulnerable groundwater basins
A legal challenge brought by two out-of-state investment firms is testing how Arizona establishes groundwater protections. As the case moves through the courts, state officials warn the outcome could affect future efforts to limit new irrigation in vulnerable aquifers. It’s already complicating decisions in other threatened basins.
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ENVIRONMENT
Arizona’s Hualapai Valley now a ‘de facto transfer basin’ for out-of-state investors and corporate farms
Out-of-state investors and industrial-scale agriculture businesses have poured millions into deep wells and water-intensive nut orchards in Arizona’s Mohave County, betting on the state’s unregulated aquifers to keep profits flowing. Now, more than 99% of the cropland in the Hualapai Valley basin is owned or controlled by out-of-state farming operations or investment funds.
Costly maintenance, compliance burden long-term viability of Hopi water treatment system
High levels of naturally occurring arsenic have long plagued the Hopi reservation, forcing families to haul clean water from distant fill stations or buy it in town. The Arsenic Mitigation Project has increased community access to clean water, but the treatment system is difficult to maintain in this remote stretch of high desert.
Tribal water settlement aims to repair generations of exclusion
The Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act would resolve decades of legal disputes and devote $5 billion to delivering Colorado River water to tribes in northeastern Arizona. For the Hopi and Navajo, the promise of assured water follows generations of exclusion from major allocation decisions. For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the agreement represents…
Groundwater regulation weaknesses exploited by industrial-scale agriculture
Over the past 15 years, even with groundwater restrictions in effect that limit new irrigated land, at least several thousand acres of dormant farmland have again started siphoning groundwater to sustain new crops in Arizona’s Douglas basin, often under industrial-scale owners that consolidated the land—and the grandfathered water rights tied to it—into massive operations.
Whispers of groundwater regulations spur surges of deeper, higher-capacity wells
Arizona farmers and water experts worry that further delay in groundwater legislation will allow larger, often corporate-backed farms to continue expanding their share of groundwater before future regulation takes effect. By applying for new wells that go deeper, often with higher capacity pumps, those with the financial resources to drill them can extract so much…
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