By Melissa St. Aude | Casa Grande Dispatch
The Casa Grande City Council on Monday will consider taking a stand regarding a controversial Arizona Department of Water Resources rule modification that systematically would strip farmers of water credits for future development.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 510 E. Florence Blvd.
Before the council Monday will be a resolution that, if passed, would add the city’s voice to those urging repeal of the rule.
For months, the group Farmers Against State Takings (FAST) — a coalition of farmers, residents and agricultural advocates — has been rallying support from legislative representatives and community members in an effort to get the rule repealed.
The rule is aimed at protecting limited groundwater supplies in Pinal County and preventing over-pumping, but FAST members believe it would devalue area farmland.
“However well-meaning the plan was intended it was ill conceived and based on faulty premises,” the resolution before the council reads.
Extinguishment credits — also known as groundwater credits — may be sold by farmers in full or in part when farmland is retired and used by buyers, usually developers, within the same water management area.
Under the ADWR rule modification, those credits will begin a systematic decline of 6 percent annually beginning in January. Extinguishment credit allocation factors reach zero in 2054. At that point, farmland will be valued at prices comparable to desert land with no extinguishment credits.
Critics of the plan believe that as the groundwater credits begin to decline, some farmers will sell land quickly before allocation factors fall too far and the land becomes further devalued.
“The Pinal agricultural economy may be seriously jeopardized well in advance of any development if farmers must decide whether to retire their grandfathered agricultural water rights and get out early with full conversion credits or to continue farming and see their conversion credits and the credits’ associated value disappear to zero,” the council resolution reads.
Critics of the plan also believe the state is unfairly taking something of value from farmers.
“The reduction of farmland equity without compensation and a rule reduc- ing the amount of extinguishment credits that forces both farmers and investors to make decisions now that they would otherwise not want or need to make until a more appropriate time is onerous and may be harmful to the economy of the area,” the resolution reads.
Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents FAST.
