By Mike Sunnucks | Rose Law Group Reporter
The town of Queen Creek has forged a water rights deal with a group holding water rights on farmland in La Paz County.
The deal involves the growing East Valley suburb obtaining water rights held by Greenstone for farms in the Cibola Valley area, two hours east of Phoenix.
Greenstone is a Phoenix company specializing in water rights and associated transfer deals.
The Queen Creek deal involves the town getting rights to 2,088 acre-feet of water now used for farming in La Paz. Some of the farmland is being decommissioned.
The transfer has to be approved by the Arizona Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The water deal will help Queen Creek with its growth.
“The Town is committed to ensuring the sustainability of Queen Creek today and into the future – and this agreement is an important part of that commitment,” said Mayor Gail Barney. “Because we are such a young municipality, we haven’t had some of the renewable water resources available to other cities.
This puts us on more equal footing and helps us move away from our long-term dependence on groundwater. This agreement will prevent nearly 200,000 acre-feet of groundwater from being pumped over the next 100 years – benefiting current and future generations of Queen Creek and the region.”
