By Jeremy P. Jacobs, E&E News Greenwire: Thursday, December 27, 2018
MOHAVE COUNTY, Ariz. — Breakneck agricultural development by well-heeled out-of-staters has upended conservative orthodoxy in this parched rural county.
“We were the ‘Land of the Free’ for the longest time,” state Rep. Regina Cobb (R) said recently at a Republican forum. “We wanted to be able to put wells where we wanted to. We didn’t want monitoring. We didn’t want metering. We didn’t want government coming in and telling us what to do.”
“Until,” she told an audience where some wore “Make America Great Again” hats, “we saw the number of wells that were being put into the ground.”
Seven years ago, there was virtually no farming in Mohave County.
E&E News examines the West’s mismanagement of groundwater, an unseen environmental disaster that threatens to send America’s food system into meltdown.
