“Frankly, I believe they are not doing their jobs,” Mayes said about Arizona’s Department of Water Resources’ oversight of rural areas. But in rural areas, little is required of water users besides registering wells with the state and using the water for activities, including farming that are deemed a “beneficial use.” Phoenix, Tucson and other Arizona cities have restrictions on how much groundwater they can pump under a 1980 state law aimed at protecting the state’s aquifers. In Arizona, renewed attention to Fondomonte’s water use is raising questions about the state’s lack of regulation around pumping groundwater in rural parts of the state. We just can’t - in the midst of an epic drought - afford to do dumb things with water in the state of Arizona anymore.”
Consumption of water per day for free#
In an interview with The Associated Press, Attorney General Kris Mayes said she thought most Arizonans see it as “outrageous” that the state is allowing foreign-owned companies “to stick a straw in our ground and use our water for free to grow alfalfa and send it home to Saudi Arabia. Now, worsening drought has focused new attention on the company and whether Arizona should be doing more to protect its groundwater resources.Īmid a broader investigation by the state attorney general, Arizona last week rescinded a pair of permits that would have allowed Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Almarai Co., to drill more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) into the water table to pump up to 3,000 gallons (11 kiloliters) of water per minute to irrigate its forage crops. In rural Arizona’s La Paz County, on the state’s rugged border with California, the decision by a Saudi-owned dairy company to grow alfalfa in the American Southwest for livestock in the Gulf kingdom first raised eyebrows nearly a decade ago.
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