Arizona’s Democratic governor outlines groundwater proposal that has Republican support

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs renewed a push Thursday to regulate groundwater in rural parts of the drought-stricken state, and she’s more optimistic this time that her efforts will find support in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

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Hobbs stood alongside local officials, rural Republican leaders and Democratic lawmakers to unveil her proposal to create new management areas to regulate groundwater pumping — long used by farmers and rural residents without restriction. She urged legislators to take swift action to reach a consensus.

“We made more progress last year on negotiating rural groundwater reform than has been made ever,” Hobbs said. “We’re not starting at ground zero. We’re starting at a good place.”

Identical bills were introduced in both chambers Thursday, but neither has Republican co-sponsors. Local conservative leaders like Prescott Mayor Phil Goode urged Republicans in the Legislature not to see water as a partisan issue.

“Last time I checked, there wasn’t Democratic water and Republican water,” he said. “There’s water for our state.”

Travis Lingenfelter, a Republican who chairs the Mohave County Board of Supervisors, said he expects Republicans to introduce rural groundwater legislation early next week, which the senate GOP spokesperson said she could not confirm.

Lingenfelter said Republicans and Democrats started at “polar opposite” places last year, but ongoing negotiations have brought the two sides “really close” to a middle ground.

Groundwater already is regulated in the state’s most populous areas — including Phoenix and Tucson — called active management areas, through a law passed in 1980 that hasn’t been updated since.

The legislation attempts to provide a just-right alternative between active management areas and irrigation non-expansion areas that limit farming on new land. Active management areas have been criticized as too regulatory, and irrigation non-expansion areas have been called not regulatory enough.

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The legislation would create four rural groundwater management areas in basins experiencing severe decline near Gila Bend, Kingman, Vicksburg and Willcox, and shift the Willcox Basin that Hobbs designated as an active management area to the less restrictive model proposed in the legislation.

Conservation guidelines are intended to be more flexible than what Democrats proposed last year. The legislation also would establish councils — similar to what Republicans previously sought — with local leaders who will have the authority to set conservation targets.

Hobbs said she would not hesitate to act unilaterally if the Legislature fails to come to an agreement this session.