Arizona Department of Water Resources

Protecting & enhancing Arizona’s water supplies for current and future generations.

AMA Management Plans

Management Plans for each active management area reflect the evolution of the Groundwater Management Code, moving Arizona toward its long-term water management goals. The plans include mandatory conservation programs for all persons withdrawing, distributing or receiving groundwater designed to achieve reductions in withdrawals of groundwater.

A series of five management plans prepared beginning in 1980 and running through 2025 contain progressively more rigorous management requirements for agricultural, municipal and industrial water users.

Live query for Supplement 1

In 2022, as a result of the discussions of the 5MP Safe-Yield Technical Subgroup, ADWR published the Overdraft, Safe-Yield, and the Management Goals in Arizona's Active Management Areas Report, a detailed interpretation and analysis of safe-yield. This comprehensive report includes a description of the aspects of safe-yield, how ADWR analyzes those aspects, and the status of each AMA with regards to its management goal. Although the management goal is not safe-yield in every AMA, the applicability of this analysis to other management goals is discussed in the report. The Overdraft Data Dashboard was developed as a supplement to the report, to support data transparency efforts of the department, and to allow an interactive method to stakeholders to explore the associated data.

Management Plans

Second Management Plan

The Second Management Plan, adopted in 1989, is the second in a series of five management plans required by the 1980 Groundwater Management Code. The plan guided water management efforts in the Active Management Areas during the last decade of the 20th century. The conservation programs for agricultural, municipal and industrial waters users, introduced in the First Management Plan, have been strengthened; and the water resources analysis of the Active Management Areas have been revised. With the addition of two new programs - water quality assessment and management, and water supply augmentation and reuse - the Second Management Plan presents a more comprehensive water management strategy. The plan's requirements are designed to bring water users another step closer to achieving the water management objectives for the Active Management Areas.