"I can only look at the current rates of use," Buschatzke said. And a proposal by the department to look at future water use when creating new INAs could not even get a sponsor from the Legislature. Tom Buschatzke, director of the state's Department of Water Resources, said the law prevents him from acting.
"The bottom line was just, sorry, we don't have jurisdiction to help you," Babbitt said. The state Department of Water Resources has already rejected this, effectively saying pumping hasn't drained enough water out of the aquifer to meet the standards to create a new INA.īruce Babbitt, the former Arizona governor who signed the landmark groundwater management act in 1980, called the state's letter to Mohave County rejecting the INA "mumbo jumbo." It would be the fourth INA created under the state's groundwater management act. “You can do that with what you generate as a product of the water,” Glotfelty said. “We don’t have the rules in place to prevent that from happening.”Ĭobb wants to change that and have the state approve an emergency “irrigation non expansion” area for Kingman to limit any new agricultural wells from being drilled. But you can export virtual water.”įarms from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates doing just that have angered residents in the La Paz County communities of Vicksburg, Salome and Wenden. “It’s not legal to export groundwater or surface water out of the state. “The term I heard a lot of years ago was virtual water,” said Marvin Glotfelty, a groundwater expert and consultant. That’s brought companies from California, Las Vegas, Minnesota, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to rural areas throughout the state seeking to exploit Arizona’s underground resource.Ĭompanies use Arizona’s groundwater to grow alfalfa, pistachios, pecans or other crops and then export some of the products to other states or countries.Ĭobb, a Republican representative from Kingman, said the Peacock Nuts operation is "mining our water." She said this is why she is “obsessed” with doing something about out-of-state agribusiness using up Arizona’s precious resources to profit. There’s no cost for the groundwater other than the cost of drilling the well and the electricity to bring the water to the surface. They include private-equity firms, investment funds focused on agriculture, and foreign food companies, mirroring the nationwide trend of big capital driving the ag industry and leading to larger farms. Peacock Nuts is one of seven corporate farms identified by The Arizona Republic as major agricultural groundwater users in Arizona. A worker plugs holes in an irrigation line in a field of young pistachio trees at Peacock Nuts Co.'s farm in Kingman.
0 kommentar(er)
