During Arizona’s most critical moment in water history, with Colorado River negotiations determining the state’s future, the Republican majority in the Legislature continues to put Rep. Gail Griffin in charge of water policy — the politician who tried to send a memorandum to the U.S. president claiming “salt cedar trees are the main cause of Colorado River water declines” before her colleagues talked her out of it.
Our state is about to go under the federal microscope, and Griffin isn’t a great look for us.
Griffin isn’t a big fan of talking to the press. But that doesn’t mean she keeps her views to herself. Over 10% of the House Majority’s press releases this year came from Griffin about groundwater legislation — praising her own bills and grumbling about Gov. Katie Hobbs not passing them.
Last month, Griffin began a “training” campaign for her Republican colleagues, presumably reviewing the water-related political talking points she’s been broadcasting. But I can’t confirm this because myself and others were turned away at her first training session in Sierra Vista.
I sat outside the meeting, chatting with the Republican committeeman acting as bouncer. Some attendees left early and chatted with us, a few of them saying they “didn’t agree with everything” Griffin was preaching. That’s no surprise, as she’s been friendly with unpopular corporate agricultural operations, has blocked rural Republican efforts for groundwater reform, and downplays the problems of groundwater decline that locals experience firsthand.
But to the extent that her talking points do propagate into the political wilds, it might be helpful to know what’s fact, fiction, or fuzzy logic.
We can’t go through every argument from all 20 of her press releases — as Brandolini’s Law states: It takes an order of magnitude more energy to debunk bullshit than to create it.
But let’s equip our trusty Gail Griffin Decoder Ring and look closely at some of the major messaging strategies from her office.
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Griffin’s P.R. campaign
August 5 - Governor Hobbs Vetoed the Only Bills That Help Domestic Well Owners, Calls Concerns “Pointless,” “Trivial”
STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – As historic drought and lack of adequate groundwater recharge continue to cause some domestic wells to run dry, Arizona House Republicans introduced commonsense legislation to address immediate concerns and provide reasonable solutions.
Arizona’s current “mega drought” accounts for approximately 15% less rainfall than historical levels. We could see the drought fully reverse and even see double the precipitation of pre-drought levels, and that still wouldn’t offset the 300-400% overdrafts in the Willcox and Douglas Basins, and groundwater levels would continue to decline.
This session, Republicans were the only lawmakers to introduce bills specifically addressing domestic wells—and Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed every one of them.
HB2086 is an amendment to a law Griffin passed in 2016, which allows counties to create donation-based funding programs to help residents deepen their dry wells. Counties have cited “statutory limitations, the effort it would take to start the program, and the significant funding required for the program” as hurdles to adopting the program. Only La Paz County has adopted the program and, so far, it has not received donations nor awarded grants. Griffin’s 2025 bill would have added “water hauling” infrastructure as a qualifying financial need.
HB2274 would have allowed Cochise County Supervisors to hold a special election to designate some part of the Willcox Basin as a domestic water district. Locals can already create a water district at any time, but Willcox residents turned down this idea in 2022 when it was proposed.
Meanwhile, rural neighbors have taken matters into their own hands, forming the People For The Playa Water Resources 501c3 which has confirmed with the USDA that they can apply for grants to help neighbors deepen their wells. (They’re also hosting the 1st Annual Cochise Water Fair this weekend, which I’ll be speaking at.)
Governor Hobbs has repeatedly cited dry wells as justification for lawmakers to adopt her rural groundwater proposal—which would impose mandatory reductions of up to 40% over 40 years. But her administration has provided no evidence that such extreme reductions would do anything to prevent additional wells from going dry or help restore failed wells.
The only way to stop wells from going dry is to reduce overdraft until water levels stabilize. The largest farmers in the Willcox Basin have said they’re ready to adopt 1% or even 2% annual reductions of groundwater use, like those proposed in the Hobbs-backed Rural Groundwater Act that Republican legislators would not hold hearings for. These reduction programs could stabilize aquifers within 50 years. But, somehow, Griffin understands agricultural economics better than farmers, and tells them these cutbacks “would devastate rural economies.”
May 18 - One-Page Fact Sheet on the Governor’s Rural Groundwater Proposal
The Governor’s Proposal (HB2714 and SB1425)
These twin bills, known as the Rural Groundwater Management Act, were developed with input from agricultural and rural stakeholders, including Republican county supervisors. More importantly, the bills were advocated for by elected officials, farmers, and residents from rural Cochise and La Paz counties where groundwater problems are most dire, but were never given a hearing.
Meanwhile, Griffin enjoys being a darling of out-of-state — and very not-rural — corporate lobbying groups.
April 24 - Governor Hobbs Vetoes Legislation That Would Have Provided Critical Groundwater Data
House Bill 2271 (supply and demand; assessment; groundwater), sponsored by Representative Gail Griffin, Chair of the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water Committee, would have required the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) to provide basic information—such as the number of active index wells and average depth-to-water level— in its annual supply and demand assessments for each rural groundwater basin.
As a data nerd and water-concerned citizen, I believe Hobbs should have passed this legislation, despite its flaws. Rejecting all water bills “outside the context of negotiations” with Republican lawmakers turns water policy into a political football — a game Arizona can’t afford to play.
But Griffin is clear about why she wants the data, some of which is otherwise useless: To build anti-regulatory arguments.
There could be hundreds of years’ worth of water beneath the surface.
… Republicans acknowledge that some rural groundwater basins are facing challenges, but they believe they are not receiving a complete picture, leading some to suspect the Governor may be trying to mislead lawmakers into thinking that certain basins are in a more “critical” condition than they actually are.
Griffin’s bill requires a report of the “total volume of groundwater available in the groundwater basin to its maximum depth” so she can say, “Hey, we’ve got plenty of water.”
But what data is she not asking for?
The rate and scale of earth fissure formations
Land subsidence measurements
The depth of non-brackish potable groundwater
The average residential well depth
The number of wells estimated to go dry in the reporting period
Judging critical groundwater conditions based on total volumes of water assumes that Arizonans can and should use all that groundwater.
But they can’t, and they shouldn’t.
Most people can’t afford a 1,000-ft well, if they can afford a new well at all. Most residents and rural water providers can’t afford to treat brackish and sulfuric groundwater, which well drillers are increasingly encountering as they drill deeper in rural Cochise County. And most can’t afford to repair their homes and roads when earth fissures erupt across their properties and neighborhoods.
The truth is that, one day, our water tables will finally stabilize. The question is how far we’ll let them decline before that happens, and how much destruction and destitution those declines will cause. The sooner we start balancing our water budget, the better.
A century ago, Arizona stubbornly refused to make any concessions in Colorado River negotiations — and receiving junior water rights was the price we paid for that error.
When we needed U.S. taxpayer dollars to bail us out of a crisis and build the CAP canals, the federal government refused until we were willing to put some limitations on our ever-growing water demands.
Today, the stakes are much higher, but Arizona faces the same choice: Get on our A-game, or drag our feet. You don’t really need a decoder ring to see why putting Griffin in charge of water legislation sends the message: We don’t know how water works, and we’re not trying to learn.
For more on Gail Griffin’s 2025 water legislation, see this edition of the Water Agenda. And this one for Griffin’s history of water policy failures.