In a First, Arizona’s Attorney General Sues an Industrial Farm Over Its Water Use

With agricultural overuse and drought draining aquifers across Arizona, the state’s chief law enforcement officer is suing Saudi Arabia-based Fondomonte, but the lawsuit could have unintended consequences.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a nuisance lawsuit against an industrial agricultural operation Wednesday in a novel case that alleges the operation’s groundwater pumping is threatening public health and safety and the infrastructure of the surrounding community.

Mayes hopes the suit sends a message that pushes state legislators to pass new laws managing groundwater across rural Arizona, where the rapid decline of aquifers is a growing concern. Water policy experts, however, warn the lawsuit could have unintended consequences.

The case targets Saudi Arabia-based Fondomonte Arizona LLC, which has farming operations in La Paz county on the state’s border with California that have become emblematic of Arizona’s water woes. The company has been the center of controversy in recent years, with its massive farms making international headlines as they grow alfalfa on state and private land to feed cattle in the Gulf kingdom with no government limits on the amount of water being pumped for the water-intensive crop.

The state cancelled some of its leases of land to the company last year, but Fondomonte’s operations in La Paz county have continued, which any traveler driving on Interstate 10 can see shortly after crossing into Arizona from California. According to a hydrology report commissioned by the Attorney General’s office, Fondomonte pumped 31,196 acre feet of water in 2023, enough for over 90,000 homes in the state, and uses more than 80 percent of the Ranegras Plain Basin’s water pumped each year. That’s caused local wells to run dry, the lawsuit alleges, including one that supplies the local church, and is driving land subsidence.

“The people of La Paz County and those living in the Ranegras Plain deserve action, and that is what we are delivering today,” Mayes said during a press conference. “Fondomonte’s unsustainable groundwater pumping has caused devastating consequences for the Ranegras Plain Basin, putting the health and future of the residents of La Paz County at risk. Arizona law is clear on this point. No company has the right to endanger an entire community’s health and safety for its own gain. No company has the right to threaten the health and safety of an entire community for its own profit.”

Mayes said the goal of the lawsuit is for Fondomonte’s operations to be declared a nuisance, its “excessive” groundwater pumping curtailed and an abatement fund established to address the damages it has caused, such as draining local wells. 

Under Arizona’s current laws, 80 percent of the state has no regulations overseeing groundwater, allowing agriculture operations to pump unlimited amounts.

Across the state, wells in rural communities have run dry, driven by overconsumption of groundwater—often by agricultural operations—and drought worsened by climate change. That’s led community members, local leaders, environmentalists and water experts to call for updating the state’s groundwater laws, but efforts so far have stalled in the state Legislature, often with Republicans in key positions preventing the bills from being heard in natural resource committees. 

“There’s no restrictions on this basin, and that is why we are seeing foreign companies come over to these areas, purchase land and pump water out so they could [grow] their alfalfa and send it back home,” said Holly Irwin, a supervisor in La Paz County who for years has advocated for rural groundwater protections. “Attorney General Mayes is the first one who has actually stepped up and has done anything about it.”

Mayes blamed the state Legislature for what has happened in La Paz County and hopes the lawsuit will prompt lawmakers to finally pass legislation. “This crisis has been exacerbated by a failure of leadership in our state,” she said. “The Legislature has known about these issues for years and has failed to act, leaving the people of La Paz County vulnerable to exploitation by companies like Fondomonte.”

The lawsuit is just the latest in a series of recent developments regarding Arizona’s diminishing aquifers. Last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs formed a bipartisan water policy council to craft proposals to address the issue. Over the past five years, the state’s allocation of the Colorado River by the federal Bureau of Reclamation has been cut, with more reductions likely on the way. Eighteen months ago, Hobbs announced that no new developments in the Phoenix area could rely on groundwater, and the state water department has begun the process to implement groundwater regulations in some parts of the state with increasingly depleted aquifers. 

The reality of the ongoing drought is no longer questioned in Arizona, but divisions remain over how to address it, experts have said.

“This lawsuit reflects, more than anything, that there has been a kind of shifting perspective on groundwater, from a resource to be extracted and put to beneficial use to a resource that needs to be protected and only to be used for certain purposes,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University who also serves on the governor’s water policy council. 

But proving Fondomonte’s operations have created a nuisance and its groundwater pumping is excessive may be challenging. Other basins, such as in Willcox or Gila Bend, are in worse conditions, Porter said, but Fondomonte is a unique entity. Its status as a Saudi-owned company largely leasing state land has drawn outcry from the public, though other out-of-state and even Arizona-based farming operations use large amounts of water to grow alfalfa. It’s also the single entity drawing the vast majority of the water in the basin, unlike in some other areas where multiple operations use the water. 

And with Arizona’s current groundwater laws not regulating places like the Ranegras Plain Basin, it may be hard to argue Fondomonte’s use is unreasonable, Porter said.

Mayes said she’s likely to file more such lawsuits in the future, especially concerning similar operations in Cochise County, where the Willcox basin has seen some of the highest levels of pumping from an aquifer in the state. There, groundwater pumping by large agricultural operations has drawn down the water table by 400 feet below the average well depth and created large fissures in the earth. A lawsuit against Riverview LLP, a Minnesota-based dairy company that arrived in Willcox in 2015, is likely, Mayes said.

However, these nuisance lawsuits may have unintended consequences, Porter said. Republicans in the Legislature could pass legislation to protect farming operations from future litigation like this. And if Mayes wins, it could open up any well owner to the risk of such lawsuits over their potential to lower the groundwater table, something that could impact small farmers and other operations like mines and power plants. 

“There’s a whole new world of risk” because of the lawsuit, Porter said. 

Mayes’ action certainly pressures the state Legislature to do something, Porter said, but it could disrupt ongoing negotiations there to craft a new groundwater code. It also brings more attention to alfalfa, the crop grown across the state to feed the cattle that provide Americans with beef and dairy products. The crop is often blamed for water issues in Arizona and across the Southwest, but it has flourished there because of its value and the region’s ability to grow it year round.

Still, water is just as important to the crop as the region’s sunshine and consistently warm weather. 

“The issue isn’t alfalfa,” Porter said. “It’s having a sustainable supply of water.”

Cover photo: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes explains to the media how excessive groundwater pumping in La Paz county is causing ground subsidence in the community on Dec. 11. Credit: Wyatt Myskow/Inside Climate News