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Arizona's cities and suburbs are among the fastest growing in the nation despite water scarcity concerns due to ongoing severe drought and climate change. However, federal officials may finally put the brakes on unrestrained development and chronic overuse of water, starting with forcing Arizona to use 21 percent less water from the Colorado River this year.
Even with steep cuts to Arizona's access to Colorado River water, some developers think they can outrun the water crisis by relying solely on pumping groundwater from underground aquifers, but water experts disagree. Kathleen Farris, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy is convinced that growth is surpassing the water limits in parts of Arizona. She worries that the development boom is on a collision course with the aridification of the Southwest and the finite supply of groundwater that can be pumped from desert aquifers. “This is the epitome of irresponsible growth. It is growing on desert lands, raw desert lands, where there’s no other water supply except groundwater,” said Ferris.
To add to an already anxiety-producing water reality, much of Arizona's precious groundwater is being used by private companies for a paltry fee, including Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company, Almarai. The company, through a subsidiary, has been buying and leasing land across western Arizona since 2014, drawing unlimited amounts of water to grow an alfalfa crop that feeds dairy cows 8,000 miles away. A 1980 state law that regulates groundwater use in a handful of urban areas is outdated and legally insufficient to deal with a largely unregulated groundwater pumping reality.
Desperate to ease water worries in Arizona, state officials are contemplating a costly proposal to build a plant to desalinate ocean water in Mexico and pump it 200 miles across the border and through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an international biosphere reserve. Jennifer Martin with the Sierra Club told the water finance board in a statement that Arizona should be focused on conserving water, moving away from water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, and reining in rapid growth, rather than shifting the environmental burden onto Mexico and future generations.
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That’s what people don’t realize, is they think of those charismatic animals like bears and cougars and elk and deer and now moose, but they don’t think about all the other species out there. We have at least 52 mammal species we’re trying to connect, and then there’s a bunch of amphibians, reptiles. Basically there are more than 100 species that are just vertebrate species we’re trying to connect. It’s not just a small number of species; it’s a lot.”
