Arizona takes major step toward regulating groundwater pumping in Willcox area

The Arizona Department of Water Resources said Wednesday it’s taking the first steps to usher in groundwater pumping regulation in the Willcox Basin, whose aquifer has dramatically declined due to unregulated pumping by farmers.

The department issued an order starting the process to designate an Active Management Area for the Willcox Basin southeast of Tucson.

Immediately, ADWR’s action closes the Willcox Basin to any new agriculture until the department makes a formal decision on whether to create the AMA. Farmers may only irrigate land within the proposed AMA boundaries that were irrigated “at any time” during the five years before the state issued its notice Wednesday.

If an AMA is created, it would require the department to set long-term goals for the basin and its aquifer’s health, and would lead to gradually stiffening conservation requirements on pumping there, particularly what’s done by farmers.

Willcox lies about 85 miles southeast of Tucson. The entire Willcox Basin that would be included in an AMA covers 1,911 square miles — almost as large as Delaware. It extends from eastern Cochise County into southern Graham County.

Agriculture is by far the dominant economic force in the basin. That’s one reason past efforts to regulate pumping there failed due to many farmers’ opposition.

The department’s action will kick off what’s likely to be a highly contentious debate. Creation of an AMA will draw massive opposition from many farmers and top Republican legislators — just as it will draw huge support from environmentalists and many Willcox residents who have grown increasingly weary of watching groundwater levels chronically decline.

An ADWR report Wednesday said 26 wells in the basin that are regularly measured by the state fell 10 feet to nearly 142 feet from 2000 to 2020. Since ADWR’s inception in 1980, the department has found 71 wells in the basin that have gone dry, including 29 that dried up in the past decade.

Land subsidence has also worsened over time, with more than 11.5 feet of subsidence measured in the basin since 1969. Subsidence occurs when over-pumping of the aquifer causes the ground to collapse, and subsidence rates have more than doubled since 1996, ADWR’s data shows.

The subsidence can cause earth fissuring, which in the basin has damaged roads and other property. ADWR has mapped nearly 50 miles of fissures there, more than in any other basin in the state.

“The Willcox basin has been experiencing significant groundwater level declines since the 1950s. The rate of decline has increased over time. As the widespread decline in water levels indicates, the aquifer system’s outflows far exceed its inflows. If current rates of groundwater withdrawal continue or increase, and recharge rates do not change, groundwater level declines will continue to worsen,” said the report by Ryan Mitchell, ADWR’s chief hydrologist.

But after many years of political wrangling over the basin’s agricultural pumping, in November 2022, a citizens initiative to establish a Willcox Basin AMA failed overwhelmingly at the polls in that area.

The opponents have long said an AMA is not the best idea for the basin in part because they say its regulatory structure is too inflexible.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has agreed an AMA isn’t an ideal solution. But her office and ADWR have come under increasing pressure to take administrative action to deal with the unregulated pumping as lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature were unable to reach agreement on a legislative fix, which all sides have said would be the best option. Previously, Hobbs had said creating an AMA would be an option if a bipartisan agreement on legislation couldn’t be reached.

The governor was asked Wednesday morning while attending an unrelated ribbon-cutting in Phoenix why it has taken so long to propose an AMA for the basin.

“Well, we wanted to make sure that we were incredibly thoughtful about the process. We spent a lot of time talking to folks in Willcox. And, as you know, I was committed to working something out in the Legislature,” Hobbs said.

“I’m still hopeful that can happen. But this action was important to protect the folks in Willcox. And I traveled down there. I talked to farmers. I talked to a bipartisan group of elected officials. I talked to well owners, homeowners, who are all concerned about the groundwater depletion,” she said.

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Sen. Sine Kerr, a Republican who chairs the Arizona Senate committee handling water legislation, said the Hobbs administration would rather take the easy path of big government action, against the will of voters, than do the real work of negotiating with the Legislature.

“It has now been 135 days since the Republican majority delivered a comprehensive rural groundwater plan to Hobbs, a plan that actually provides for more meaningful conservation than an AMA, and we have yet to receive her response. Her lack of leadership and lack of willingness to work with lawmakers in a bipartisan manner are on full display with this maneuver,” said Kerr, who chairs the House Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee, who was referring to attempts to get Hobbs to support proposed legislation.

Responding, Hobbs’ spokesman Christian Slater said, “Because of the inaction of politicians like Senator Kerr, earth fissures have opened in the ground, wells are going dry and family farms are barely scraping by due to groundwater depletion. Senator Kerr should listen to leaders in the Willcox basin calling for change rather than the corporate special interest groups profiting off pumping the basin dry.”

Stefanie Smallhouse, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, pronounced herself “extremely disappointed” by Hobbs and ADWR’s move to consider designating an AMA in the basin.

“I really don’t understand what the goal is with this. The governor has even said in the past she doesn’t think an AMA is the right fit for Willcox or a lot of other communities. I don’t see the point of it,” said Smallhouse, who has been involved in still-unsuccessful negotiations over legislation for rural groundwater regulation for many months.

AMA, first established in 1980 for cities such as Tucson and Phoenix, were designed for areas like those that have surface water supplies such as the Central Arizona Project that diverts water from the Colorado River, she said.

“Willcox obviously has no surface water; it makes no sense. It won’t fix the problem,” Smallhouse said.

But Kathleen Ferris, a former ADWR director and now an Arizona State University water researcher, called the department’s action long overdue.

“We have seen the pillaging of the groundwater supplies in the Willcox basin by industrial scale agriculture for too long. It hasn’t stopped. When the AMA initiative was voted down, more and more agricultural land has come into production since then,” said Ferris.

“And I know there are some people in that area who didn’t think it was the right solution. But we’ve waited for the Republican-controlled Legislature to take action, given them years. We can’t wait any longer.”

Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on a comprehensive rural groundwater law in the 2024 legislative session. They’ve continued negotiating without success.

A Republican-backed bill cleared the Senate but died on the last day of the 2024 legislative session when the House voted it down. Although Republicans control both houses of the Legislature, two Republican representatives weren’t present for that vote, and it failed by a single vote in a party-line split.

That bill would have allowed creation of basin groundwater management areas in the Willcox Basin and two other basins in Central and Northwest Arizona where water tables are also rapidly declining.

The failed bill would have allowed for water use curbs of up to 10% in the first decade of a basin management area’s existence and another 5% later. It would limit cuts to no more than 2% a year. Opponents said those limits didn’t allow enough flexibility for additional cuts if water tables keep falling as fast as they are now. But bill supporters said they feared allowing for deeper cuts could jeopardize farmers’ livelihoods.

A group calling itself Cochise Water Stewards said Wednesday that “enough is enough” after a decade-long wait for solutions to Willcox’s collapsing aquifer.

Vance Williams, a resident of the Sunizona area southeast of Willcox, said, “I am grateful that ADWR has finally decided to take the first step toward establishing an AMA to protect the groundwater in the Willcox basin. I just wish it had happened sooner as my well in Sunizona went dry in 2020 and I have heard from many other neighbors across the basin whose wells have gone dry.”

His home is within five miles of a major dairy owned by the Minnesota-based Riverview LLP company and more than 50 center pivots delivering well water to crops in the area to supply the dairy cattle with feed, he said.

“The AMA will stop any new large agricultural operations from moving into our area while also putting a halt to expansion of existing irrigation,” Williams said. “I am hopeful that the AMA will also reduce current pumping levels, a necessary step needed to save our aquifer. Thank you to Governor Hobbs and her staff for working to protect the groundwater in the Willcox Basin.”