Water war, class war, culture war

Rep. Alex Kolodin wants a water market … Arizona needs water sovereignty … And doing Mother Earth's dirty work.

Today, we’ve got a long Drip Line conversation between myself and LD3 Republican Rep. Alex Kolodin, who’s currently campaigning to be Arizona’s next secretary of state.

I also take a look at Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto of SB1109 and some questions it raises.

And this week’s “other news” was put together by writer Arren Kimbel-Sannit, who’s going to take the helm of the Water Agenda for the next couple of months. We’ll give Arren a proper introduction next week.

Thanks for reading, Arizona.

Alex Kolodin has a lot to say about water policy. He says he researched the topic extensively for two years in order to better represent his constituents on the issue, and he has a lot of confidence in his theories about what kinds of water policies Arizona should adopt moving forward.

Whereas Attorney General Kris Mayes, per our discussion published last week, is very concerned about rural water rights being bought up and transferred away from local communities, Kolodin thinks this marketization is exactly what the doctor ordered. Put a price tag on it, and water will flow “downhill toward money,” where it belongs.

From Mayes’ brief in Mohave County’s lawsuit to block the transfer of water rights to Queen Creek.

We also discuss the concept of “correlative groundwater rights,” where a landowner in a groundwater basin has water rights in proportion to how much of the land they own in that basin.

You’ll hear me and Kolodin agreeing on some policy concepts, disagreeing elsewhere.

I think it’s in Arizona’s interest to have more public discussion and nerdy debates about water policy — because the longer we wait to develop solutions for balancing the water budget, the harder the problem will be to solve.

Some background on Kolodin:

• He was raised in Arizona, attended Chandler High School, studied at Georgetown University where he earned his undergraduate degree, then attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, receiving his Juris Doctor. During his studies, he earned a Reagan Fellowship at the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, and he eventually founded his own law firm, the Kolodin Law Group.

• Kolodin has served as legal counsel in a number of high-profile Arizona lawsuits, representing:

  • The Cyber Ninjas

  • Former Rep. Liz Harris

  • Mark Finchem, Anthony Kern and Paul Gosar

  • Himself against Adrian Fontes

  • And many more

• Perhaps his biggest water policy move has been his strike-everything amendment to SB1432, signed by Hobbs in 2023, which required Scottsdale to recontinue supplying water to 750 households in Rio Verde Foothills.

“We cannot continue to kick the can down the road forever,” he told the Arizona Mirror in 2023. “The status quo of water policy in this state is untenable. And if allowed to continue, it will cut off our growth and fundamentally diminish our way of life.”

Opinion: Arizona’s water should be for Arizona first

This week, federal authorities filed charges against two Chinese nationals, Yunqing Jian, and Zunyong Liu, for conspiracy, smuggling, making false statements and visa fraud, the Associated Press reports. Liu has admitted to smuggling into the United States the plant pathogen Fusarium graminearum, which is known to attack grains like wheat, rice and corn.

The sensational story is, perhaps, bad political timing for Gov. Katie Hobbs who just vetoed SB1109, which would have barred the People’s Republic of China from buying or otherwise procuring land in Arizona, as a matter of state security. The bill states, among other “legislative findings”:

“This act's protection of this state's military, commercial and agricultural assets from foreign espionage and sabotage will place this state in a significantly stronger position to withstand national security threats.”

The bill originally applied to all countries identified by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence as posing “risk to the national security of the United States.” But this week’s Drip Line guest, Rep. Alex Kolodin, amended it to only apply to China because, he said, the broader restrictions might have been at odds with the Arizona Constitution.

In her veto letter, Hobbs said the bill “lacks clear implementation criteria and opens the door to arbitrary enforcement.” Republican supporters of the bill disagree.

“Many of the bills Hobbs axed this session were clearly veto bait, but the China veto was a headscratcher for Kolodin,” Capitol Media Services’ Bob Christie writes.

Sen. Priya Sundareshan, who sits on Hobbs’ Water Policy Council, criticized the bill’s restriction against the PRC as “exclusionary” — perhaps revealing some of the partisan political pressure against Hobbs signing the bill.

“May is still Asian American and Pacific Islander month, and yet, here we are hearing a bill that has been very narrowly amended so that it specifically targets foreign nationals from China from owning land in the state,” Sundareshan said. “What a way to celebrate Asian American month.”

So why do I bring this up in a newsletter about water?

Well, Sundareshan has reminded us of a water policy issue that might be very difficult for both Democrats and Republicans to navigate.

Fondomonte, Arizona’s infamous agricultural operation, is owned by Saudi Arabian nationals.

For the most part, it has become politically safe to say that foreign and out-of-state companies shouldn’t have unlimited access to Arizona’s groundwater. Even Hobbs jumped on the Arizona-first bandwagon when championing new groundwater regulation proposals this year.

“I’m not going to sit by and let out-of-state corporations exploit our resources,” she said at a January press conference.

So why are some Democrats worried about “exclusionary” policies?

Last year, May Tiwamangkala, the advocacy director at Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander for Equity, wrote an oped in the Arizona Republic, criticizing a similar anti-foreign-ownership-of-agriculture bill and other legislative issues which she said “could take us down the dark path to xenophobia and ‘anti-foreigner’ divisiveness.”

“Arizona’s water is precious, and we should be conserving and controlling every drop that comes out of our ground. But what difference does it make if water is being sucked out by Saudi companies, out-of-state companies like Minnesota-based Riverview Dairy or Arizona investment companies like Greenstone?”

Interestingly, conservative opinion writer Phil Boas agrees with Tiwamangkala that it shouldn’t matter who’s using the water — but he said it's Democrats who are doing the demonizing.

“The two Democrats (Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes) 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. … If the tables were reversed, and the Republicans were attacking the Saudi farmers, the Democrats would have played the race card faster than a royal flush. They'd be screaming, ‘Xenophobia!’

More importantly, we’re demonizing Saudi farmers for doing something that is not at all remarkable in Arizona agriculture. Is this the beginning of demonizing all producers who turn Arizona water into global products?”

Back in 2015, when people in La Paz County were first expressing concern about Fondomonte, even Arizona’s Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke jumped to the company’s defense.

“While the ownership of some farms in the area have changed recently, just like their predecessors, the new owners invest in the local economy. They provide jobs, purchase irrigation equipment, tractors, fuel and fertilizer, and pay taxes,” Buschatzke wrote.

Tiwamangkala, Boas, and Buschatzke are all correct that groundwater overdraft is groundwater overdraft, no matter who’s using the water.

So why do I think they’re all wrong about allowing foreign and out-of-state companies to have their way with Arizona’s water? Does it really matter who’s using it?

Yeah, it does matter. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Arizona’s limited water supplies are overdrafted and diminishing. Cutbacks to water use, especially agricultural water use, are not far on our horizon.

When the dust settles, if foreign and out-of-state companies are still here using our water, the profits go into the pockets of corporations in Saudi Arabia, China, California, Minnesota, and elsewhere. For Arizona, that’s a net loss of nearly all the economic value of that water.

But if the crops are grown by Arizona companies and exported to other states or countries, the profits from our water resources go back into our local economy.

The difference couldn’t be more dramatic and consequential.

Option 1 vs Option 2 — for the visual learners.

As we start to see water prices rise, Arizona is going to need every penny on the gallon she can get, to pay for water recycling, expand water delivery infrastructure, subsidize water bills for those who can’t pay $700 every month, and so on.

But what about Buschatzke’s claims that foreign-owned agriculture has knock-on benefits for local economies?

In fact, Arizona offers generous agricultural property tax exemptions, so we can’t count tax revenue as a great boon. And at least 75% of our farm workers come across the border from Mexico with H-2A visas, which means not a lot of local jobs are being created. And farmers in my area say the out-of-state industrial operations are less likely to source their supplies and services locally.

So the unavoidable result of foreign-owned farming is a net loss of Arizona water to other countries and states — we can’t afford to pretend it doesn’t matter who’s using the water, and we can’t turn it into a culture war issue.

Perhaps the quickest way to disarm concerns of xenophobic exclusion is to flip the gameboard around: Should Arizona be going to other drought-stricken communities and using their water to grow alfalfa that we ship back to Arizona? Would those communities be exclusionary or xenophobic if they said “Sorry, Arizona, but you can’t take our water — we actually need it”?

Or, would we find those objections sound and reasonable?

If you find real-talk about water to be refreshing, consider dropping some coin.

Kolodin, in our Drip Line conversation, provides another perspective: Foreign-owned farmland is no longer an issue once water becomes a free market commodity, because residential water users in central Arizona will simply outbid foreign companies.

He could be right about that — or it could be that wealthy, water-scarce countries won’t give up their Arizona water, even if the buyout price is generous.

A follow-up question for Kolodin — and I’ll certainly publish any response from him — would be whether we want to see how high the cost of water is driven up in an open water market. It could become an incredibly expensive game to play, hitting citizens much harder in the pocketbook.

So … everyone’s wrong!

Or, at least, I think most will agree that an Arizona-first water policy makes a lot of sense for our state; and we must avoid confusing that policy with ideas of xenophobic discrimination — even in the era of Trump’s deportations and trade wars — lest our lawmakers lose the confidence of the public over a common-sense issue.

I’ll put forward three simple propositions which I believe must undergird all Arizona water policies:

1. Arizona has a diminishing supply of water.

2. Arizona must have first priority to her own water.

3. Among Arizona water users, residents should have the highest priority to water, for drinking and basic residential uses. (And for some amount of environmental conservation if we want our grandchildren to enjoy the same natural wonders and waterways that we enjoy today.)

SB1109 wouldn’t have moved Arizona closer to water sustainability, it might have had some major flaws, and it would have been only a tiny, first step on Arizona’s journey to water sovereignty — but hopefully it wasn’t vetoed for the wrong reasons.

Make Arizona Wet Again: Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen wants the feds to support a desalination plant in California “in exchange” for more Colorado River water for Arizona, as part of broader negotiations about the river’s usage, KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez writes.

“I am confident that the Trump Administration will work with the states to strike a deal that ensures our future water security,” Petersen wrote recently.

No news is bad news: This week, water managers from the Colorado River Basin states decided not to attend one of their only annual public meetings. Alex Hager of Colorado’s KUNC joined KJZZ’s Mark Brodie to speculate on the no-shows.

“The main takeaway for me is just that these negotiations are probably not going very well. I think if there was good news, these negotiators might be more willing to share it. You know, from what we've seen over the past year, or year and some change, is that these policymakers have really made up their minds. They are digging in their heels on policy stances,” Hager said.

Blue gold: New research from Arizona State University offers a sense of scale for Arizona’s groundwater problem: the Lower Colorado River Basin has lost as much groundwater in the last 20 years as is contained in all of Lake Mead, ABC15’s Adam Klepp reports. The researchers attribute the decline to drought, urban growth and agricultural use.

"It was deposited underground tens of thousands of years ago, and we have been burning through it in a century,” Jay Famiglietti, an Arizona State University professor in the School of Sustainability, told ABC15.

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Anyone thirsty?: At least three Arizona cities — Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tucson — are planning to use highly purified wastewater to meet growing residential water needs, including for consumption. Cities have long used so-called advanced purified wastewater to recharge water supplies, Cronkite News’ Allison Kotzbauer reports. But regulations promulgated by the state department of environmental quality in March allow cities to offer the treated water for immediate consumption. Spooked? Officials say the water quality will be rigorously monitored; and that, in a way, you’ve already been drinking this water.

“All water is recycled water, so even in traditional water treatment, the water cycle exists,” Randy Matas, ADEQ’s Water Quality Division deputy director, told Kotzbaue. “Utilities purify wastewater and then historically have discharged it to the environment, either through groundwater or surface water. That groundwater or surface water is then reused as drinking water down the line.”

The ooze: Arizona Game and Fish Department officials have detected a harmful cyanobacteria in algal blooms in Apache Lake, leading to the issuance of a public health advisory from the Tonto National Forest. Visitors to the lake should avoid the bright-green blooms and not ingest or cook with the water.

Speaking of algae: ASU hydrology researchers and a Phoenix-based soil company are promoting the application of microalgae to improve soil health and water efficiency in agricultural settings.

“We have growers who have documented a 15% decrease in water use on alfalfa, an extra half-day between irrigation cycles on peppers and a 24% improvement in water-use efficiency on tree nuts,” the company, MyLand, says.