Arizona’s Hualapai Valley now a ‘de facto transfer basin’ for out-of-state investors and corporate farms
When controversial Las Vegas developer Jim Rhodes abandoned plans for a sprawling community near the northwestern Arizona city of Kingman nearly two decades ago, the vast swaths of land he’d purchased were mostly surrounded by open desert. Instead of walking away from his investment, Rhodes applied for a group of industrial-scale agriculture wells that could reach the largely untapped groundwater in the Hualapai Valley Basin. … Today, more than 99% of the cropland in the basin is owned or controlled by out-of-state farming operations or investment funds. … More than half of the basin’s cultivated land is tied to California-registered companies, which collectively farm close to 13,000 acres.
Other groundwater news around the West:
- KJZZ (Phoenix): Q&AZ: What is an AMA in Arizona, and what does it have to do with water?
- Queen Creek Tribune (Ariz.): How Queen Creek will fund $244.4M water deal
- Arizona Capitol Times (Phoenix): Opinion: Protecting the lifeblood of our rural communities
- Record Searchlight (Redding, Calif.): Groundwater workshop looks at Shasta County water security, land subsidence
- Phys.org: Invisible groundwater threatens aging urban infrastructure, researchers warn
