Rural Arizona is drying up. Will lawmakers do something about it?
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A piece of Arizona legislation, with bipartisan backing, is aiming to bring better oversight and protections of groundwater across five basins in rural Arizona.
The bill's sponsor, state Senator Priya Sundareshan - D-Tucson - explained that the Rural Groundwater Management Act of 2025 would create water-management programs that would have a say over conservation efforts, and would strive to reduce groundwater use while improving the state of aquifers.
SB 1425, and its mirrored bill in the House, would also create local councils to monitor the basins.
Sundareshan said the bill is intended to protect folks from out-of-state entities that flock to Arizona for its lack of regulation, ultimately leaving communities dry.
"Residents whose wells are going dry, their foundations are cracking because the groundwater has been depleted so much that the aquifers are settling," said Sundareshan. "You have large-scale industrial agriculture that has moved in because of the complete lack of regulation."
Similar legislation failed last legislative session.
Sundareshan recalled that under the Republican majority at the state Legislature, the bill has not yet been heard in committee, and this week is the last week for such action.
She added that people's ability to continue living in small Arizona towns depends on water availability, and called on policymakers to act.
New data finds that most Arizonans - about 72 percent - believe inadequate water supply is a serious problem, according to the 2025 Conservation in the West Poll.
Sundareshan said the last time significant water legislation was passed in the state was in 1980, with the Groundwater Management Act.
"But it only really protected the urban areas, and it set up a process for further management of other areas in Arizona," said Sundareshan. "But it only created two tools - the active management area approach, and the other tool created is the INAs, the irrigation non-expansion areas."
INAs are created when the Arizona Department of Water Resources determines there is not enough groundwater in a given area to provide a "reasonably safe supply for irrigation," on cultivated lands, therefore having no need to establish an active management area.
Sundareshan said these tools cap the expansion of agricultural acreage in the state, but don't do much to manage the consumption of groundwater.
