Two bills give away our water, and they must be voted down
Your turn Bruce Babbitt | Guest columnist The Arizona Republic 3/4/2026
Two bills now pending in the Arizona Legislature are poised to grant the New York hedge fund Water Asset Management (WAM) control over water transfers from all of western Arizona. The bills, if enacted, will have a profound, lasting, negative impact on both rural and urban Arizona.
In 1991 the legislature designated three groundwater basins in western Arizona – the Harquahala Valley, McMullen Valley and Butler Valley – for future groundwater transfers to Phoenix and urban areas in Central Arizona.
Thirty-five years later, the rush to open these three groundwater basins is underway. In the Harquahala Valley a WAM affiliate has obtained water rights from individual farms and become the controlling seller. To date WAM has sold a 100-year package of these transfer rights to the city of Buckeye for $80 million and another to Queen Creek for $285 million.
Bills would grant hedge fund all of western Arizona’s groundwater.
The other two transfer basins in McMullen Valley and Butler Valley have not yet been developed. These two basins are the subject of pending legislation that would effectively extend WAM control to all of western Arizona’s groundwater.
In the McMullen Valley a WAM affiliate has recently purchased the majority of the private farms, more than 12,000 acres, for a reported price of $100 million.
However, the 1991 law limited transfer rights to owners who purchased farmland before Jan. 1, 1988. A narrow exception for public agencies does not apply to private purchasers. WAM therefore has a “water ranch” that cannot transfer water.
In January, Reps. Gail Griffin and Walt Blackman introduced House Bill 2758 that would rescue WAM by adding a new section to the Groundwater Code authorizing land owners in the McMullen Valley to sell and transfer water into the Phoenix Active Management Area.
Value of water giveaway could approach $1 billion.
The value of this impending legislative giveaway can be estimated by comparing the recent WAM sale of a 12,000-acre feet 100-year package of water to Queen Creek for $285 million. HB 2758 would grant WAM a right to sell 36,000-acre feet of 100-year water packages which would yield nearly a billion dollars in sales.
A companion bill, HB 2757, deals with the third basin, the Butler Valley. This bill would eliminate competition by preventing water exports from the Butler Valley to the Phoenix Active Management Area. With Butler Valley effectively closed to transfers and WAM controlling the McMullen Valley, WAM would gain effective control of all groundwater transfers from western Arizona.
These bills will not benefit either urban or rural areas of our state. They would bring exorbitant water prices to urban communities and taxpayers in the Phoenix Active Management Area.
Passage of these bills would also send a message that Arizona is wide open to speculators seeking control of our future. HB 2757 and HB 2758 should be withdrawn or voted down.
Bruce Babbitt served as Arizona governor from 1978-87 and as secretary of the Interior under President Bill Clinton from 1993-2001.
