… In July, the Legislature passed, and Governor Katie Hobbs signed, an unprecedented law to authorize the transfer of groundwater rights from agricultural to urban use within Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. This framework legislation – called “Ag to Urban” – enables farmers in these three counties to sell and transfer their groundwater rights to the home building industry. … To gain the necessary majority for passage, Ag to Urban contains a significant limitation: the credits made available to home builders can be used only within a one-mile radius of the farmland being retired from production, thereby ensuring that local communities will retain a continuing share in ongoing regional development.
–Written by Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona and former U.S. secretary of the interior under President Bill Clinton.

Other groundwater regulation news around the West:

• Inside Climate News: Q&A: Arizona’s AG takes on utilities, big water users and the Trump administration
• The Park Record (Park City, Utah): Opinion: Follow the water, especially the paper kind