Arizona takes action on groundwater overuse
And "nonfunctional turf" taken to court.
Hello, and welcome to Invisible Waters. As an addendum to my last post on the Colorado River, I wanted to flag this wonderful glossary by The Land Desk’s Jonathan Thompson on terminology and context for understanding Colorado River discourse.
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Where the groundwater goes
Arizona officials announced this month they would limit groundwater pumping from a declining aquifer system that made headlines after a Saudi-owned farm had been allowed to extract billions of gallons to grow and export alfalfa for dairy cows.
The L.A. Times’ Ian James, who has closely been following the story, reported on the state’s action last week. The move comes after Attorney General Kris Mayes sued the company, Fondomente, at the end of 2024. That litigation is ongoing and alleges that the company violated public nuisance laws, arguing that dewatering of the aquifer in question, the Ranegras Basin, has “accelerated at an extraordinary rate.”
As with many groundwater basins, withdrawals from the basin had long exceeded the annual replenishment rate, causing declines in the water table and land subsidence. In the state’s order regulating the groundwater basin, officials noted that some wells had declined more than 90 feet over 20 years, with one registering a 141.9 foot decline.
According to the order, the Arizona Department of Water Resources received more than 300 comments supporting management of the basin, touting the benefits of such action as including “safeguards for private property, local jobs, future investment, and future economic growth.” Others, the order said, “stated that it is unacceptable that vast amounts of Arizona’s finite groundwater are being pumped without oversight to grow water-intensive crops for export.” Hint, hint. One element of this story I found interesting was how much Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) has leaned into talking about it.
Water can make for bad politics, a lose-lose proposition in which you are almost certain to leave someone frustrated. And that’s especially true when you are limiting its use. But here is what Hobbs had to say about the action in her State of the State:
“Unlike politicians of the past, I refuse to bury my head in the sand. I refuse to ignore the problems we face. I will tackle them head on to deliver for our state.
… I will continue to stand up for communities across our state to ensure they are protected from corporations who care only about today’s profits, not Arizona’s future… That’s why today I am announcing a new Active Management Area for La Paz County, to crack down on the out-of-state special interests that are pumping our state dry while Arizona families and farmers suffer.”
Agree or disagree with the decision, the messaging lays out the stakes in real terms, doing something for constituents who see water supply as a major concern across the West. It also gets at the tradeoffs at the heart of so many water issues, but especially groundwater issues: The rights of an individual water user versus community needs.
“Today’s profits” vs. “Arizona’s future.”
After years of overallocation, groundwater regulation, on its face, may look limiting, but in cases when it aims to reduce overuse, it can serve to protect communities who rely on it. This is what Hobbs emphasizes — that acknowledging water constraints and developing management structures can actually enhance security, not diminish it.
How much water are we talking about?
Annual outflows from the groundwater basin, according to the order, are about 42,000 acre-feet. To put that in perspective, Arizona uses about 7.0 million acre-feet of water every year. What matters, though, is not the volume but the magnitude by which those 42,000 acre-feet in outflows exceed inflows, or how much water recharges the aquifer on an annual basis. In the case of the Ranegras Basin, the gap is significant. The state estimates inflows of about 4,500 acre-feet. That means roughly 9.5 times more water leaves the groundwater basin than replenishes it. Even if higher recharge estimates are used (6,000 acre-feet), the issue is largely the same. The math speaks for itself.
I wanted to flag this story first because while the total volume of water might seem small in the context of a watershed or a given state’s total water use, what matters is the local context. Over-pumping to such a degree, and for so long, has resulted in real consequences for the community. As a Republican county official, who has long raised the issue, told the Times: “You’re starting to see more and more wells get depleted. If we don’t try to slow this thing down, where are we going to be in 20 years?”
Even what seems like a small volume of water, if over-pumped, can lead to severe long-term consequences. Debt can accumulate any time you exceed a budget, and budgets come in different scales. This seems intuitive but it’s something that is missed out of so many conversations. One example is in some of the data center discourse: Many stories look at data centers in the aggregate, and water supply in aggregate and then conclude, surely we have the capacity for them. This may be true in sum. But as many experts have noted, it’s the local supply-demand paradigm that matters. Can the local supply sustainably support a large new demand without sacrificing community needs?
One last thing on this: Hobbs is right to note that many politicians in the past have hid from this issues. It’s always shocking how well-documented overallocation was as groundwater boomed in the mid-20th Century. On that note, I wanted to share this snippet from a 1955 USGS report I was looking at on groundwater rights. From 1955:
Overdraft can be eliminated if water is available from another source to replace some of the water taken from the affected aquifer. In areas where no alternate source of supply is available at reasonable cost, public opinion so far appears to favor treating ground water as a nonrenewable resource comparable to petroleum and metals, and mining it until the supply is exhausted, rather than curbing the withdrawals at an earlier date. (emphasis mine)
See also, “Arizona comes to agreement with major dairy farm to cut groundwater pumping that is draining wells,” Wyatt Myskow, Inside Climate News
“Nonfunctional turf” faces a court challenge
As the current shortage on the Colorado River began to take hold in 2021, Las Vegas water officials lobbied Nevada lawmakers to pass a first-of-its-kind law to phase out and eventually ban the use of Colorado River water for ornamental turf.
The landmark law built on decades of work by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to conserve water by a) incentivizing customers to convert grass to drought-tolerant landscaping, and b) limiting grass in new developments. Because Las Vegas recycles most of its indoor water, outdoor irrigation is the major driver of water consumption.
The 2021 legislation went a step further. Relying on cash incentives and rules to limit future turf had been wildly successful, but those tools were starting to hit a saturation point. To meet aggressive conservation goals and deal with a smaller Colorado River supply, the water authority went further. Under the 2021 law, the state required the removal of existing turf that serves a decorative and nonfunctional purpose by 2026.
Some of what that includes is obvious. Think, the oblong patches of turf you at the center of a median or business park. The kind no one touches. But defining what is and is not nonfunctional turf also required many judgment calls. In 2021, a committee released a report recommending nonfunctional turf include frontage and adjacent turf at properties not zoned single-family residences, as well as HOA areas where the turf is not serving a recreational or community benefit, defined further in the report.
Some had a different idea, viewing that turf as “functional” in their daily lives, even if it didn’t fit the committee’s definition. And so, last week, several Las Vegas residents sued before the 2026 deadline, alleging that the agency acted outside of its authority and challenged the constitutionality of the 2021 law (and a supplementary 2023 law).
It begins with a quote from the Lorax “[we] speak for the trees” and focuses largely on the removal of grass that provides cover for trees. The lawsuit alleges that more than 100,000 trees have died in the Las Vegas Valley, resulting in a loss of $300 million.
It includes lines claiming the water authority, through the law, “anointed themselves the water legislature, jury, and executioners.” It includes rhetoric like the “abusive wielding of this unconstitutional law must be stopped immediately before more trees die and the Las Vegas Valley becomes a desert wasteland,” and claims that “Las Vegas has been naturally green due to an undefined amount of groundwater independent of the Colorado River.” Which of course is not totally how it unfolded. Yes, Las Vegas did once depend on groundwater, but that supply was actually quite bounded and limited, so much so that its overuse and depletion led to the disappearance of springs. And its overuse ultimately required Las Vegas to depend on its full Colorado River allocation.
But I digress.
Underneath the strident posture are real, important issues. Conservation requires using less, and using less is always harder in reality than it is on paper. When it has to be implemented on an individual level, everyone wants an exception. This was one thing the head of the water authority made clear when I interviewed him for a story in Smithsonian Magazine about Las Vegas conservation in 2023 and asked what the hardest part was: “I know it sounds simplistic to say, ‘Making people change their behavior is the hardest part,” he said. “But that’s always the hardest part. Every group we talk to says, ‘We fully support your conservation programs, but how do we get a carve-out for our little piece?’”
This is important as deep conservation increasingly becomes part of municipal water strategies in the West. Since the 2021 law passed in Nevada, other jurisdictions have adopted rules around nonfunctional turf, or considered doing so. Seemingly tedious things like how terms are defined, or where they are defined, can have implications for not only the total water savings but also the ultimate impact and cost to end users.
It also speaks to questions about how limited water supplies are equitably distributed in communities, how to share water when the math dictates someone has to use less.
Even more broadly, the story got me thinking about institutional processes, systems, and governance when it comes to using less. It may seem like designing water systems in an Era of Limits requires less infrastructure than the era of big dams, pipelines and canals. But it requires lots of hard and soft infrastructure, if more distributed in nature.
Clearing my inbox, closing out my tabs, etc…
Western U.S. faces worsening snow drought, with California being the rare exception (AccuWeather)
In a warming world, freshwater production is moving deep beneath the sea (Associated Press)
“Published on the occasion of UNU-INWEH’s 30th anniversary, and ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference, this flagship report, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era, argues that the world has entered a new stage: more and more river basins and aquifers are losing the ability to return to their historical “normal.” Droughts, shortages, and pollution episodes that once looked like temporary shocks are becoming chronic in many places, signalling a post-crisis condition the report calls water bankruptcy.”
Newsom steps into labor fight over Sites Reservoir (E&E News/POLITICO)
Colorado River governors called to Washington (L.A. Times)
Report says New Mexico faces ‘looming groundwater crisis’ from climate change, overuse (Source NM)
How New Mexico learned to love its ephemeral waters (Border Chronicle)
Great piece on two topics we can't help but follow in the West. The Saudi farm was such a shocker when I first read about it several years ago (Was it in HCN?). Two thoughts: 1. What are the available strategies for replenishing groundwater? Can it be replenished again once the ground has sunk? I've read about farmers in the Central Valley in CA building gigantic basins to funnel it back underground, since we do get enough winter rain. I don't know if beavers have been considered or if they could make an impact at this stage. 2. It seems like an entire weekly newsletter could be devoted to exploring the non-functional turf issue. The plaintiffs have taken a fascinating angle indeed, and one that will inform these laws going forward. We've got a non-functional turf law in CA, and I'm waiting for someone to point out/sue over the fact that you can't just walk away from non-functional turf, turn off the sprinklers, and not water it, because it becomes a fire hazard. Two competing priorities.