A monthly members-only column by Alan Dulaney
One of the major failures of the last legislative session was the failure to address issues of groundwater overpumping in rural Arizona. Water policy experts, who mostly work in Phoenix and Tucson and see first-hand the success of the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, share a consensus that some form of groundwater management is badly needed outside the Active Management Areas (AMAs). No such consensus prevails outside the AMAs.
The economy of rural Arizona is largely agricultural, farming, and ranching. The antipathy of farmers and ranchers and their neighbors in small towns towards regulation is based on their independent spirit and need to be free to pursue what needs to be done to make a living in rural counties. The two go hand-in-hand. Suggestions and warnings from experts in Phoenix and Tucson are viewed as edicts from elites in the Kingdom of Maricopa (and the Principality of Pima), who know little about the struggles of agriculturalists. Elitist demands for management of the groundwater that farmers and ranchers depend upon are generally not welcome. And this viewpoint has a considerable following in the Arizona Legislature.
Yet the picture is beginning to change.
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