24 April 2025
2025-04-24 11:09:00
Op-Ed By Rep. Gail Griffin (R, LD-19)
STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – Rural Arizonans want to know how much groundwater they have beneath their feet, but Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed the only legislation that would have provided them with that information.
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.
Importantly, the bill would have also required ADWR to provide the total volume of groundwater available in each basin, which is a critical metric that Arizona state lawmakers and local constituents have been asking for.
Last Friday, Governor Hobbs vetoed the bill, stating in her veto letter that knowing how much groundwater is available in each basin would not “make a difference in solving the [state’s] water policy challenges.” Representative Griffin disagrees, as do many rural constituents.
State and local officials want complete and accurate groundwater information to make informed decisions on rural policy matters.
In 2023, La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin said, “If you don’t know what’s underneath the ground, how can you even determine how much your supply and demand is going to be?” “The county needs to know how much water is in the ground … You need to know what’s down there.” “We don’t know how much water we have in these aquifers.”
In 2023, La Paz County Supervisor Duce Minor said, “This issue is the unknown. No one knows how much is in the aquifers.”
In 2023, Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes said: “[W]e have no idea … how much water is left.”
In 2023, Sarah Porter, Director of ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy and member of the Governor’s Water Policy Council, said: “You need to know … how much water is there.”
In 2010, Former ADWR Director, Herb Gunther, who served under Democrat Governor Janet Napolitano, said that gathering “information on existing supplies” was “necessary“ and “important“ for “the future needs of the … state.”
In 2010, Ron Doba, Administrator for the Northern Arizona Municipal Water Users Association and member of Governor Hobbs’ Water Policy Council, said that gathering this information is the “first step“ in “addressing the state’s water needs on a statewide basis.”
In 2022, ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke said: “[I]f you want to manage something well, you need to have the data. … [Having the data] would be a benefit to the state, and we could build consensus.” “Certainly, to put together a robust and successful regulatory program, you need the data….” “You cannot manage something you cannot measure.”
State and local officials have fought to obtain this information, but ADWR keeps deflecting and won’t provide it.
Last year, House and Senate Republicans sought to obtain this critical groundwater information, sending a letter to ADWR in December 2024 asking, “How many years’ worth of water do we have?“
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.
In 2024, La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin said, “I requested updated hydrology studies. And we’re almost in 2024 now… and I’ve yet to get any updated hydrology studies.” Kris Mayes called the lack of information “outrageous“ and said that La Paz County is “begging for a hydrological study.”
In 2022, the Legislature included a provision in the landmark Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA) legislation (SB1740) to require ADWR to provide a recurring supply and demand assessment for each basin that would include the amount of “supply” in the basin, with the first set of assessments to be completed in 2023.
In 2022, ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke testified in support of the bill, saying: “[The supply and demand assessment] is a key to eventually get to a place where we can find a way to start getting better data than we have now.”
On July 6, 2022, Governor Doug Ducey signed SB1740, providing hope that constituents like La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin and others would receive regular updates on the rural groundwater basins that mattered most to them.
Since 2022, however, ADWR has issued 22 supply and demand assessments (7 in 2023; and 15 in 2024), and none of them have included the total volume of groundwater available in the basin to a depth below the “average well depth” in the basin, which is not a metric the Department has used before.
According to records dating back to 1994, the Department has consistently defined “groundwater in storage” as the total amount of groundwater available to a depth of 1,200 feet. ADWR under Governor Hobbs appears to have changed the definition to the amount of groundwater available to the “average well depth,” which is only 409 feet in the Willcox Basin and only 35 feet in the Ranegras Plain.
According to Representative Griffin, providing the amount of groundwater available to only 35 feet deep in a basin does not provide meaningful information nor respect the specific requests that state and local officials have been making over the last several years.
In subsequent correspondence received from the Department, the Hobbs Administration either explains why it cannot provide the requested information or why it thinks the information, if it could be provided, should not be used for the purpose of making policy decisions.
There could be hundreds of years’ worth of water beneath the surface.
In 2010, Former House Speaker of the House Andy Tobin passed legislation (HB2661) to “identify and quantify the water supplies currently available in each county.”
The bill received wide support, including from Democrat Governor Janet Napolitano’s ADWR Director, Herb Gunther, who said the “goal” of the bill was, “number one,” to “identify what water resources are available currently.”
On May 11, 2010, Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill, and, on October 1, 2011, ADWR issued a statewide assessment, showing that, as of the end of the relevant assessment period, the following basins had the following non-adjusted estimated volumes of groundwater available in storage to a depth of 1,200 feet (page 27, table 9) (a complete copy of the table can be found attached):
| Groundwater Basin/Subbasin | Groundwater Supply to 1,200 feet |
| Willcox Basin | 42 million acre-feet |
| Douglas Basin | 20.8 million acre-feet |
| Gila Bend Basin | 17 million acre-feet |
| McMullen Valley Basin | 14 million acre-feet |
| Harquahala Basin | 13 million acre-feet |
| Big Chino Subbasin[1] | 10 million acre-feet |
| Ranegras Plain Basin | 9 million acre-feet |
| Hualapai Valley Basin | 3 million acre-feet |
| Butler Valley Basin | 2 million acre-feet |
While the volumes reported above are substantial, they only reflect the amount available to 1,200 feet. Most of the groundwater basins are actually much deeper. The Willcox, Hualapai, and Ranegras Plain basins, for example, are 4,800, 8,000, and 3,200 feet deep at their maximum points, respectively.
Although the 2011 assessment did not express the total volumes of groundwater available in storage in each basin in terms of the “number of years” that the supply would last at the present rate of decline, the 2011 assessment did provide other relevant groundwater data—such as estimated annual demand and estimated annual recharge—that members of the public could use to calculate that figure independently.
Based on the estimates included in ADWR’s 2011 assessment, the following groundwater basins could be said to have had the following number of years’ worth of groundwater available in 2011, based on the most recent rate of decline that was estimated for each basin at the time of the 2011 assessment:
| Groundwater Basin/Subbasin | Years’ Worth of Groundwater at the Reported Rate of Decline[2] |
| Willcox Basin | 261 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Douglas Basin | 547 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Gila Bend Basin | 60 years’ worth of groundwater[3] |
| McMullen Valley Basin | 199 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Harquahala Basin | 199 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Big Chino Subbasin | 610 years’ worth of groundwater[4] |
| Ranegras Plain Basin | 317 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Hualapai Valley Basin | 441 years’ worth of groundwater |
| Butler Valley Basin | 148 years’ worth of groundwater |
While the information above likely does not reflect current groundwater trends—as additional pumping has occurred—that is exactly why state lawmakers in 2022 passed legislation requiring ADWR to update the 2011 information on a recurring 5-year basis.
As ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke testified in 2022: “The last major opportunity [we had] to do an assessment was … around the 2010 time period, and we really haven’t updated that information since that period of time.”
Cheryl Lombard, CEO of the Valley Partnership, also reiterated Director Buschatzke’s point, saying that the “needs assessment” was “created … when Speaker Tobin was in office [in 2010],” and that “it is very important that [this assessment] will be kept up via this legislation.”
When Governor Hobbs took office in January 2023, it became her responsibility to administer the 2022 legislation and ensure that ADWR’s supply and demand assessments included this critical information.
So far, however, they have not—leaving constituents guessing as to how much water is left.
Even considering the partial information ADWR provided in the last supply and demand assessment, the Ranegras Plain Basin, for example, should have at least 62 years’ worth of water available at the current rate of decline in just the top 35 feet of the basin alone.
Whether 62 years is sufficient or not is state and local policymakers’ decision, but the point of HB2271 was that the only way policymakers get to make that important decision is by having the information in the first place—and that means receiving all relevant information, not just small slices of it.
Governor Hobbs is listening to radical special interest groups and ignoring reason; she’s not listening to Arizona constituents.
House and Senate Republicans are working on tools to address groundwater in rural areas, including by conserving water, increasing groundwater recharge, providing solutions for domestic well owners, and increasing local control, but lawmakers need additional information before they adopt additional tools that could negatively impact local communities.
With Governor Hobbs’ veto of HB2271, it seems clear the Governor is putting the cart before the horse and trying to push through a predetermined outcome on rural groundwater legislation without regard to the basins that actually need it or the tools that would be appropriate for those basins.
According to Representative Griffin, the Governor isn’t listening to reason; she is listening to the most radical wing of the environmental community, who don’t have Arizonan’s best interests at heart. They don’t want rural Arizonans to know how much water they have beneath the ground.
As Former ADWR Director Alan Kleinman wisely said in 1994: “Beware of those politicians, or others, who ‘create’ a crisis and then appear suddenly with the solution to the ‘fabricated crisis’, which they just created.”
If Governor Hobbs wants to make an informed, science-driven decision, then she should be asking for this information too. She should stop listening to the radical extremists, take the time to gather and provide the updated information we requested, and tell us how much groundwater is available in each basin—just like we asked for in 2022, 2024, and 2025.
Had the Governor taken these steps from day one of taking office—such as by requiring the Department to include them in its first supply and demand assessments in 2023 and 2024, as the Legislature required in 2022—then we would have already had this information by now.
Gail Griffin is a Republican Arizona House of Representatives member serving Legislative District 19, which includes Greenlee, Graham, Cochise, and eastern Pima and Santa Cruz Counties. She chairs the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water Committee.
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