A worker plugs holes in an irrigation line in a field of young pistachio trees at Peacock Nuts Co.’s farm in Kingman.
By Brandon Loomis || The Arizona Republic
Arizona will block expansion of large-scale irrigated farming in Mohave County, state water managers announced this week in the latest move to protect groundwater supplies in the state’s largely unregulated rural aquifers.
A coalition of local leaders and statewide water protection advocates had for several years sought such a remedy to the Kingman area’s escalation of pumping for new pistachio groves, ultimately convincing the Arizona Department of Water Resources to act when the Arizona Legislature would not. Farmers and agricultural landowners had argued the Hualapai Basin would provide their corner of northwestern Arizona for centuries, but state officials determined that the pumping had become unsustainable.
Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke signed the order on Dec. 19 declaring the Hualapai Basin an Irrigation Non-expansion Area, or INA. The state’s 1980 groundwater management law provides for such a designation when pumping is depleting an aquifer, and it means large farms there can only irrigate acres where irrigation or substantial investment toward cultivation have occurred during the last five years. It does not alter current uses or limit the amount of water that irrigators can pump for them.
