Here’s your very first edition of the Water Agenda, the essential weekly guide to Arizona's most precious resource.

In 2025, we’ll be making sure you know what the heck is going on with top water stories in the state, including:

Today, you’ll get a primer on what to expect in the first legislative session of the year, an introduction to the generals of the water wars and an overview of state water affairs.

Last year was huge for rural groundwater policy and litigation — and frankly, it’s a lot to keep up with. But we’ll do our best to connect the major dots.

In December, Gov. Katie Hobbs made a power move when she had the Department of Water Resources designate the Willcox Basin as an Active Management Area (AMA) — a regulatory tool to limit groundwater pumping — rebuffing the 2022 local vote to reject an AMA designation after citizens petitioned to put it on the ballot.

But Hobbs was playing chess, not checkers.

The AMA designation wasn’t meant to be a cure-all for the dire groundwater declines in the area — it was meant to force can-kicking anti-AMA legislators to the negotiation table and find a compromise on new groundwater regulations for rural basins.

After spending all of 2023 brainstorming, the governor’s Water Policy Council couldn’t get a hearing on their proposal for groundwater regulatory reform. Instead, her Republican opponents, Rep. Gail Griffin and Sen. Sine Kerr, championed Senate Bill 1221 as an alternative that would establish Basin Management Areas (BMA) — which many stakeholders panned as a toothless version of AMAs.1

The bill failed in the state House after all Democrats and two Republicans voted against it.

Kerr retired this year and her position as chair of the Senate Natural Resources, Energy and Water (NREW) Committee was taken over by Republican Sen. T.J. Shope, who’s pushing for “ag to urban” policies. We’ll see whether he follows in Kerr’s footsteps on groundwater or takes a different tack. Like Kerr, Shope is supported by the Arizona Farm Bureau, which has consistently opposed groundwater conservation reforms.

Griffin is once again chair of the companion House NREW committee, a position from which she’ll decide which bills get hearings and, typically, how the rest of her party will vote on those bills. She’s earned a bunch of nicknames over the years, like “the queen bee of water” and “the gatekeeper” due to her penchant for blocking groundwater reform initiatives from both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Kris Mayes brought a nuisance lawsuit against the Saudi-owned megafarm Fondomonte in La Paz County where County Supervisor Holly Irwin has been sounding the alarm for years about declining water levels.

Mayes said Minnesota-owned megadairy Riverview in Cochise County is next on her litigation list.

And behind the scenes of the water battles are non-profit environmental groups like Environmental Defense Fund which engage in high-level activism toward groundwater policy reform, including earning a seat on Hobbs’ water policy council.

More visible is Center for Biological Diversity’s ongoing legal battles over the future of the San Pedro River. Last year they filed multiple lawsuits against the Department of Water Resources and Hobbs who, they say, are endangering the river by unlawfully granting groundwater rights to nearby housing developments.2

We’re sure to see some groundwater policy reform action in the Legislature this session, whether that’s actual bills in the docket or stories of failed negotiations. And we’ve already introduced some of the big names involved.

Who else might pop up in our weekly editions?

Among the Democrats in the Legislature, House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos and Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan, an environmental attorney, will be key champions for water policy reform. If policy negotiations are successful, their names are most likely to show up as the Democratic co-sponsors on bills.

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton has also shown a vested interest in groundwater policy. She sponsored legislation last year that would have required the state Department of Water Resources to designate AMAs in basins where groundwater resources are threatened by declines.

Among the Republicans, we might see continued efforts from Rep. Leo Biasucci to introduce rural groundwater reforms to address issues in rural Mohave County. His previous attempts were blocked by Griffin.

And Rep. Alex Kolodin — who Griffin kicked off of her House NREW Committee last year — let us know in the comments of the Arizona Agenda that he has groundwater policy solutions of his own. They’re foolproof, he claims. (We might have to have him as a guest on The Drip Line.)

Former Arizona Farm Bureau President Stephanie Smallhouse resigned late last year, possibly on account of the stress of her heavy engagement with groundwater politics. Replacing her is Yuma farmer John Boelts who has indicated that the Farm Bureau may be softening its position on groundwater regulations in certain parts of the state. Read his recent interview with the Republic’s Clara Migoya here.

Of course Boelts is just the public face of the Bureau. Behind the scenes is AZ Farm Bureau CEO Phil Bashaw who will be calling the shots on AZFB’s statewide policies.

Patrick Adams is the water policy advisor to Governor Hobbs, and he’s central to the ongoing policy battles at the Capitol. He’s a city slicker these days but, as local Cochise County farmer Ed Curry told me, “Patrick grew up a farm kid … he gets it” — ‘it’ being the realities of rural agriculture.

And rounding out the cast is ADWR Director Thomas Buschatzke who’s been with the department since 1982 when he joined as an intern.

These aren’t the only players in the game, but they’ll take their turns in the spotlight.

La Paz County leaders aren’t just worried about groundwater use — they’re also fighting to keep precious Colorado River water from being taken away.

Last year, a judge approved the transfer of 2,000 acrefeet of Colorado River water rights from a local farm in Cibola to the City of Queen Creek, 200 miles away in Maricopa and Pinal. The 500-acre farm had previously been bought by Greenstone Resource Partners LLC, a private company backed by global investors, Mother Jones reported last year.

Queen Creek paid $24 million for the liquid gold.

In 2022, former Rep. Regina Cobb (R) introduced a bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Leo Biasiucci (R), which would have blocked the transfer, but the bill was never given a hearing by Rep. Griffin in her NREW committee.

The transfer is just one instance of a growing trend: investment companies buying up farmland to profit from the water rights that come with it. La Paz County has teamed up with other counties in an attempt overturn the transfer, hoping to avoid a new precedent of water sell-offs.

For Arizona’s tribal communities, 2024 saw some big wins for their Colorado water rights, but also a recent loss. Hobbs signed off on a historic settlement proposal to grant water rights to the Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes. But concerned officials in Colorado weren’t willing to bring the bill up for a hearing before the U.S. legislative season ended in December. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren indicated they’ll be trying again in 2025.

And while everyone is clamoring for their share of river water, there’s one big undeniable problem: It’s running out.

Arizona is one of the seven “basin states” that rely on Colorado River water, along with Mexico. The federal Bureau of Reclamation has given the states until the end of 2026 to reach an agreement on who will cut back their allotments by how much, so that water can continue to flow across the Hoover Dam.

While Arizona, Nevada, and California — collectively, the “lower basin states” — have worked out reductions amongst themselves, they can’t get the upper basin states to agree to any reductions at all.

Arizona’s negotiations are led by Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke, who’s thinking it might be time to start playing hardball. He’s requested $1 million from the state to pursue legal action if the upper basin states continue to stonewall negotiations.

And the Central Arizona Project (that giant canal that feeds Arizona water from the Colorado) voted to ask the federal government to explore a “compact call” among the basins states — an action detailed in the original 1922 Colorado River Compact. Buschatzke warned that a compact call could force the upper basin states to reduce their water use even more than is being requested by the lower states.

While disagreements continue about the reality of “human-caused climate change”, everyone agrees about one thing: We’re dealing with a little bit of a hot-and-dry spell.

2024 delivered Arizona some notable scoreboard placements. It was the 17th driest monsoon season, and the hottest June-through-September period ever recorded.

The outlook for the current winter season is a slight La Niña, meaning warmer and drier than average as the jet stream flows toward the Pacific Northwest.

KJZZ’s Mark Brodie sat down with UofA’s climatologist Mike Crimmins to talk about the 2024 drought report — listen here.

Well, that’s enough scene-setting. But your work, reader, is not over. It’s time to learn the words of water.

Assured Water Supply, Acrefoot, Active Management Areas, Aquifer: What does it all mean anyway?

Check out the ADWR’s handy glossary of groundwater terms, so that you can be a water policy poseur like me.

Study hard — the Water Agenda exams will be held at the end of the semester.