By Phil Boas | Arizona Republic
Arizona has a problem.
We are an arid state with most of our population concentrated in what attorney Grady Gammage calls “oasis cities” — the two metropolises of Phoenix and Tucson.
Yet, Arizona is divided into 15 counties that send lawmakers to the state Legislature. Most of those counties are rural, and thus the less populated areas of the state enjoy outsized influence on state government.
In terms of water conservation, it means the metro areas, which understood long ago that we need to manage precious groundwater resources, have been willing to impose restrictions on their groundwater use.
Most of rural Arizona has not. You need to understand that to understand why the Saudis have become public enemy number one in the water wars in Arizona.
Last year, Arizona elected a Democratic governor and attorney general who have put a harsh spotlight on Saudi alfalfa production in La Paz county, a farming region in west-central Arizona that borders California.
The Saudi alfalfa production near Vicksburg is not part of a groundwater management area, meaning there are virtually no rules for pumping groundwater.
The two Democrats have argued it is outrageous for a Saudi Arabia corporation to use Arizona’s precious water to grow alfalfa to feed the cows that produce the milk for The Kingdom.
One could forgive the Saudis a moment of amusement as Americans recoil at their foreign consumption of our U.S. natural resources, given that Americans have spent several generations with our snouts buried deep in the finite oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.
Democrats will say, well, those oil resources are plentiful. Oh yeah, it wasn’t the Republicans who popularized the expression “peak oil.”
But such is politics. Now Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes are determined to cut off Saudi alfalfa farmers from Arizona groundwater.
Fine. But this is ultimately going to lead to larger questions about Arizona’s participation in the global economy, because there are a lot of business enterprises using Arizona’s precious water resources, including groundwater, to produce products for people living far beyond our state and national borders.
