Gov. Katie Hobbs lashed out Wednesday in Tucson at a proposed rural groundwater management bill that’s moving through the state Legislature, saying its procedures are so convoluted that it would be virtually impossible to set up the kind of rural groundwater management basins the bill envisions.
But Hobbs, legislators from both parties and activists on both sides of the volatile rural groundwater debate say they’re still hopeful of reaching a compromise between the bill Hobbs criticized and another bill, pushed by supporters of stricter rural groundwater regulation that failed to receive a committee hearing and is now effectively dead.
The bill, which has passed the Senate and is scheduled for a House committee hearing next week, would allow creation of Basin Management Areas in rural communities that could reduce peoples’ water use by up to 2% a year. It would appropriate $40 million to spend on water conservation programs in such areas and create a process through which farmers living within them could protect their existing water rights.
But setting up such a basin would require a unanimous vote of county boards of supervisors governing such areas, along with approval by the Arizona Department of Water Resources director. It has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists and some rural residents. The Arizona Farm Bureau and several groups of county supervisors have supported it, although some county supervisors have opposed it.
“I’m willing to work with any sponsors to pass legislation that’s real, effective and protect water supplies rural areas. But should the bill (senate bill 1221) remain unchanged it will not get my signature,’ Hobbs said Wednesday at an annual conference sponsored by the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center.
The bill will silence rural communities and create a convoluted process that will make it nearly impossible for our communities to manage groundwater,” Hobbs said.
“It leaves us with the status quo where out of state corporate farmers come from around the world to take advantage of our aquifers, and small communities have their water pumped from beneath them. This is beyond unacceptable,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs added, however, that “We in the state have many shared values: the desire to protect rural Arizona, protect rural water users and slow unmitigated depletion of our rural aquifers. We can and must find common ground to find a solution that works and puts politics aside.”
After Hobbs’ talk, Sen. Sine Kerr, the Buckeye Republican who sponsored the bill under discussion, told reporters in an email, ‘From the start, I’ve been proactive in spearheading meetings for collaboration from the Governor and her office on SB 1221 so that we can get this bill signed into law. I will continue to meet with the governor and our Democratic lawmakers with a goal of coming to a compromise on a solution that won’t hurt rural Arizonans’ livelihoods, their local economies, or their groundwater supply.
“For the Governor to recklessly say SB 1221 is a convoluted process and won’t protect our groundwater is a red herring meant to justify her proposal of big governmental overreach to regulate groundwater. Rural Arizonans know what will, and what won’t, benefit their local economies. That’s why SB 1221 empowers these citizens to elect a body they believe will represent their needs, protect their livelihoods, and safeguard their resources when it comes to groundwater regulation,” Kerr said.
Sen. Priya Sundareshan, a Tucson Democrat, said later that she, Kerr, Rep. Gail Griffin, chair of the House Natural Resources, Energy and water Committee, and Rep. Chris Mathis met Tuesday with the governor’s water policy staffers to look for a compromise.
Sundareshan said she thought some progress had been made. While the two sides didn’t focus on specific items for compromise, she said, headway was made in recognizing everyone was meeting in good faith.
Arizona Farm Bureau President Stefanie Smallhouse said she had obvious disagreements with Hobbs’ criticism of the Senate bill, but “I’m more focused on her optimism” about the possibility of compromise.
“I think there are several of us thinking that she would just veto anything that wasn’t something that came out of her Water Policy Council. I actually thought that it was encouraging; she said we have common ground, which I agree with, and that we have shared values which is true. We’re all looking for ways to make water last longer for future generations. She said we need certainty and we feel our bill provides a lot of certainty.”
Smallhouse said she doesn’t believe the senate bill contains a convoluted process. “Anytime you create a regulatory framework that is going to last a long time it should be a deliberative process, you should always be willing to take the time ad take the steps required for something as important as water. That being said, I think that there’s time in legislative session for ongoing conversations where we can continue to find common ground,” Smallhouse said.
Audubon Southwest representative Haley Paul said she’s hopeful about the outcome of this dispute because there’s multiple proposals on the table, “and I do think that if people could come together and figure out what they can live with, I think that there could be wins for both sides. I think we get certainty for water users and we get a third option that’s more flexible so rural Arizona can plan its water future.”
After her talk, Hobbs told reporters that if the Legislature doesn’t act, she and the ADWR would consider creating state-run Active Management Areas, to try to manage groundwater in rural araes and limit pumping there. Such areas are already authorized under state law, but Hobbs acknowledged that they’re not as efficient and responsive to rural communities as was the legislation on that she had backed. It was first proposed by a Water Policy Council that she appointed and that met for six months last year.
Kerr, however, said, “Threats of executive action to create AMAs demonstrate weak leadership from the governor and an unwillingness to do the hard work to create a realistic solution for rural Arizona. The Governor’s Water Council was a far cry from a collaborative effort. The voices of farmers and ranchers, those who’ve lived and breathed conservation of our most precious resources for generations in rural Arizona, were not taken into consideration by this council.”
A Willcox Basin chile farmer who did sit on Hobbs’ council, Ed Curry, denounced the current senate bill as a water giveaway.
“It’s the same old stuff. The unanimity of votes that’s required, it’s dedicated to never have any local control. If everything had to be unanimous, we’d never get anything done. You can never get everyone to agree,” Curry said.
