On November 8, 2022, residents in two southeastern Arizona groundwater basins voted on whether to put limits on groundwater use. In addition to a choice of state and local candidates for public office, in Cochise County and a part of Graham County, some ballots contained a choice between the status quo and formation of an Active Management Area (AMA) for regulating groundwater withdrawals. Voters in the Willcox Basin rejected the proposed AMA by a two-to-one margin, while voters in the Douglas Basin embraced it. Opposition by most agricultural and business interests was led by Rural Water Assurance, a Political Action Committee; a grassroots coalition of residents in both basins, spearheaded by the locally based Arizona Water Defenders, supported the measure.

 

Reasons for the opposite outcomes have not been determined. There were 6,400 registered voters in the mostly rural Willcox Basin in Cochise County. (Graham County adds about 220 voters.) Twice as populous, the Douglas Basin had 13,460 registered voters, anchored by the Town of Douglas at the border with Mexico. Both basins have seen groundwater levels fall as industrial agriculture, using deep, large-capacity wells, has moved into the region, where good-quality groundwater and the lack of regulation have attracted investments. Some domestic wells in both basins have been stranded as water levels decline. Depending on the geology, the land surface will sink, or subside, when groundwater levels fall. The Arizona Department of Water Resources has continuous records of subsidence in some areas of the state. Of the areas monitored, the Willcox Basin has the highest rate of subsidence at up to about six inches per year, or almost 10 feet of surface sinking by 2018. Subsidence in the Douglas Basin was more than seven feet in the most affected areas. Prior to the vote, a great deal of attention had been focused on the groundwater situation in the Willcox Basin, while the Douglas Basin received less outside scrutiny. In addition, most of the Douglas Basin was within an Irrigation Non-expansion Area (INA) that froze the maximum irrigated acreage to the area that had been irrigated in the five years before INA designation in 1980. There was no such pre-existing limitation in the Willcox Basin. Following the election, the two basins will take divergent paths, which sets up a real-life experiment on how groundwater regulation affects the long-term well-being of basin residents.