Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ legal battle over a Saudi-backed alfalfa farming company draining her state’s aquifers continues to garner national attention.
Mayes has previously described it as a David vs. Goliath situation and accuses the farming company of draining the Ranegras Plain Basin in La Paz County, claiming it’s impacting communities around the basin.
Her complaint leans on public nuisance laws to make her case.
The farming company, Fondomonte Arizona, denies all allegations and asserted that it operates in accordance with federal, state and local agricultural laws in a filing in May.
Most recently, the company questioned Mayes’ authority over groundwater laws, since that falls under the purview of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Background on controversial Saudi-backed farming operation
Fondomonte has operated in the Ranegras Basin since 2014, at a time when the area had virtually no groundwater regulations.
“In 2023 alone, Fondomonte used approximately 31,196 acre-feet of groundwater within the Ranegras Basin, constituting over 81% of all groundwater extracted in the Ranegras Basin that year,” Mayes’ lawsuit alleges.
While Fondomonte still operates its water pumps in the Ranegras Plain basin, the lease for its wells in Butler Valley was terminated in March 2024.
A La Paz County supervisor told Sentient the Fondomonte wells can extract 64,000 gallons of water per minute.
Fondomonte has a 10,000-acre farm where it grows alfalfa as food for livestock and exports it to Saudi Arabia, where the crop is banned.
Alfalfa is water-intensive, drawing criticism over Fondomonte’s agricultural activities in a drought-stricken region. The company is the third largest employer in La Paz County.
As of Dec. 31, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that foreign investors held nearly 45.85 million acres of U.S. agricultural land. This represents a significant increase from the 7.6 million acres recorded in 2020.
Could this lawsuit set the wrong precedent?
This issue of groundwater use garnered bipartisan support during the 2022 election, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle, from Mayes to Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial candidate at the time, agreed to cancel the permits for Fondomonte’s wells.
Late last month, Mayes in an interview with Inside Climate News said she is “filling a gap” as the state attorney general “where our regulators are failing to protect consumers.”
She accused Republicans in the state Legislature of failing to update laws related to groundwater use.
Arizona’s groundwater regulation is stringent in populated urban areas but more lax in rural areas of the state.
The Rural Groundwater Management Act, signed into law in January, gives rural communities the ability to manage their groundwater, but the law isn’t retroactive, meaning any new protections may not apply to Fondomonte’s preexisting pumping operations.
“It’s leading to incredibly unreasonable uses of water in rural Arizona that are harming entire communities,” she said. “I have had to use nuisance law to protect entire neighborhoods and communities from having their wells dewatered by major industrial operations.”
That’s the basis of her office’s suit against Fondomonte for its excessive pumping of groundwater. She accused the Saudi-owned company of dewatering the wells of many of its neighbors.
“We cannot afford to do stupid things with water anymore in Arizona,” Mayes added.
The outcome of Mayes’ untested legal strategy against Fondomonte could set a new precedent for water rights.
The Arizona Farm and Ranch Group Coalition, a group of farmers, ranchers and rural municipalities, asked the judge overseeing this case if they could join Fondomonte in its fight against Mayes. The judge did not allow this coalition to intervene.
As per KJZZ Phoenix, farmers and ranchers are concerned public nuisance claims could be filed against agricultural farms if Mayes wins the case.