Magnus
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- Jun 22, 2020
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A megadrought has seared Arizona, stressing its rivers and reservoirs and reducing water to a trickle in the homes of farmworkers near this desert valley.
But green fields of alfalfa stretch across thousands of acres of the desert land, shimmering in the burning sunlight. Wells draw water from deep underground, turning the parched earth into verdant farmland.
For nearly a decade, the state of Arizona has leased this rural terrain west of Phoenix to a Saudi-owned company, allowing it to pump all the water it needs to grow the alfalfa hay — a crop it exports to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows. And, for years, the state did not know how much water the company was consuming.
The lack of information was a choice.
Soon after the company, Fondomonte Arizona, arrived in the Butler Valley in 2015, state planners suggested asking the company to install meters and report its water use...
But the proposal “hit a stone wall,” John Schneeman, one of the planners, told The Post. It was spurned, he said, by officials in the administration of then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R) who were “cautious of tangling with a powerful company.” The proposal also ran headlong into a view, deeply held in the rural West, that water is private property that comes with access to land, rather than a public resource.
The inaction was an early sign of how state officials gave leeway to Fondomonte as a global fight for water took root in the Arizona desert. Leaving water unprotected amid a drought worsened by climate change has been a boon to Saudi Arabia, where industrial-scale farming of forage crops such as alfalfa is banned to conserve the Persian Gulf nation’s limited water supply.
A Post investigation — based on government documents and interviews with public officials, ranchers in the valley, farmworkers, and townspeople who live near the alfalfa fields — found that Arizona’s lax regulatory environment and sophisticated lobbying by the Saudi-owned company allowed a scarce American resource to flow unchecked to a foreign corporation. To advance its interests before the state, Fondomonte hired an influential Republican lawyer as well as a former member of Congress. And it sought to win over its rural neighbors, providing a high school with donations that included Fondomonte-sponsored sports bags and face masks emblazoned with the company logo to protect students from covid.
Last month, the new governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, unveiled a long-awaited study showing that groundwater in parts of the Phoenix area was insufficient to meet projected demand over the next century. Her administration also recently sought details about water use on state-owned land. Only after the state threatened to cancel Fondomonte’s leases last month did the company disclose how much it pumps annually in the Butler Valley, according to communications released as part of a public-records request. Its consumption is equivalent to that of a city of more than 50,000 people, experts said.
The governor’s aides are now preparing plans not to renew Fondomonte’s leases in the Butler Valley when they expire next year
How can a state that is starving for water allow outsiders to siphon off its precious resources? Guess, you grease enough palms and you can literally steal the farm or in this case water!
But green fields of alfalfa stretch across thousands of acres of the desert land, shimmering in the burning sunlight. Wells draw water from deep underground, turning the parched earth into verdant farmland.
For nearly a decade, the state of Arizona has leased this rural terrain west of Phoenix to a Saudi-owned company, allowing it to pump all the water it needs to grow the alfalfa hay — a crop it exports to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows. And, for years, the state did not know how much water the company was consuming.
The lack of information was a choice.
Soon after the company, Fondomonte Arizona, arrived in the Butler Valley in 2015, state planners suggested asking the company to install meters and report its water use...
But the proposal “hit a stone wall,” John Schneeman, one of the planners, told The Post. It was spurned, he said, by officials in the administration of then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R) who were “cautious of tangling with a powerful company.” The proposal also ran headlong into a view, deeply held in the rural West, that water is private property that comes with access to land, rather than a public resource.
The inaction was an early sign of how state officials gave leeway to Fondomonte as a global fight for water took root in the Arizona desert. Leaving water unprotected amid a drought worsened by climate change has been a boon to Saudi Arabia, where industrial-scale farming of forage crops such as alfalfa is banned to conserve the Persian Gulf nation’s limited water supply.
A Post investigation — based on government documents and interviews with public officials, ranchers in the valley, farmworkers, and townspeople who live near the alfalfa fields — found that Arizona’s lax regulatory environment and sophisticated lobbying by the Saudi-owned company allowed a scarce American resource to flow unchecked to a foreign corporation. To advance its interests before the state, Fondomonte hired an influential Republican lawyer as well as a former member of Congress. And it sought to win over its rural neighbors, providing a high school with donations that included Fondomonte-sponsored sports bags and face masks emblazoned with the company logo to protect students from covid.
Last month, the new governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, unveiled a long-awaited study showing that groundwater in parts of the Phoenix area was insufficient to meet projected demand over the next century. Her administration also recently sought details about water use on state-owned land. Only after the state threatened to cancel Fondomonte’s leases last month did the company disclose how much it pumps annually in the Butler Valley, according to communications released as part of a public-records request. Its consumption is equivalent to that of a city of more than 50,000 people, experts said.
The governor’s aides are now preparing plans not to renew Fondomonte’s leases in the Butler Valley when they expire next year
How can a state that is starving for water allow outsiders to siphon off its precious resources? Guess, you grease enough palms and you can literally steal the farm or in this case water!
