Arizona Department of Water Resources

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

groundwater

Interactive tool for searching groundwater-rights information now live on ADWR website

The latest interactive tool added to the Arizona Department of Water Resources web site – the Grandfathered Right Web Map system – is now up and running.

The “GFR” system, as it is known, is an interactive map intended for use by owners and lessees of irrigation grandfathered groundwater rights and of “Type 1” non-irrigation GFRs.

Published:March 14, 2019

Know your rights: ADWR to roll out new “interactive” groundwater-rights web map system

The process of providing property owners with detailed information about their groundwater rights has played out almost unchanged for decades. It has been slow. And cumbersome. And inconvenient to people holding a right to use groundwater.

That is now changing. In mid-January, the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ website will feature a new “interactive” search map that – for the first time – will allow the public to conveniently access geographical and other data about their groundwater rights.

Published:January 4, 2019

Groundwater flow model of Willcox Basin completed

As a result of continuing observations of groundwater level declines in the Willcox Basin, the Arizona Department of Water Resources initiated development of a numerical groundwater flow model in late 2015.

The Willcox Basin covers an area of approximately 1,911 square miles in southeastern Arizona and is essentially a closed basin.

That modelling has been completed. Major findings of the modelling include:

Published:July 25, 2018

ADWR hydrologists to “sweep” into Arizona’s Northwest Basins for data on aquifer depths

Beginning the week of February 5, Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) will be making an extensive effort to measure water levels in wells in the Northwestern Region Basins of Arizona.

Published:February 1, 2018

Arizona Water News sits down with the producers of "Groundwater"

After months of complicated efforts to negotiate a path to distribution, the producers of a remarkable documentary on the creation of Arizona’s landmark groundwater-protection laws finally have broken through.

Shortly after they finished production, producers Kathleen Ferris and Michael Schiffer sat down with Arizona Water News to talk about their work on the documentary.

Submitted by comm-admin on December 21, 2017 - 4:24pm

Stirring documentary on Arizona groundwater laws now available

So, consider it the perfect post-Christmas gift.

After months of complicated efforts to negotiate a path to distribution, the producers of a remarkable documentary on the creation of Arizona’s landmark groundwater-protection laws finally have broken through.

Published:December 21, 2017

Prescott communities throw sensational “coming out” party for groundwater documentary

It was the intensity of the debate over a new, muscular groundwater law that the participants remember most vividly.

The Arizona governor at the time, Bruce Babbitt, said he attended so many hard-fought meetings on the issue that for years afterward his two sons would say “Dad’s off to a groundwater meeting” whenever he left home. For any reason.

Published:May 25, 2017

NW Basins Residents Confront their Water Challenges at Water Resources Event in Kingman

Frustrated residents of the Northwest Basins Planning Area told Arizona Department of Water Resources staff at a late-June meeting in Kingman that something needs to change fast about plummeting underground water tables in some of the area’s aquifers.

They just don’t know, as yet, what that something is.

ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke along with planning and hydrology personnel traveled to Kingman on June 29 to conduct a forum on local water issues.

Published:July 6, 2016

A Changing Landscape

It is along the wide, flat desert stretches of the McMullen Valley and the Ranegras Plain west of Phoenix that some of the state’s biggest land-use changes – and most hotly debated water-related controversies – are playing out.

But it is what is happening below the scorching desert’s surface that really matters out here in the sparsely populated “West Basins” region of west-central Arizona.

Published:July 13, 2016

Lettuce help you

he list of challenges to living sustainably can be lengthy.

Conserving energy. Protecting precious resources, such as water, in times of scarcity. Buying locally. Thinking globally. 

It’s getting to be quite the to-do list for the citizen of good conscience. Everyone wants to live sustainably. Everyone wants to do their bit for society. But we all seem to have a lot of bits in our pockets these days.

Doing one’s bit can be especially complex when one of our “sustainability” missions clashes with another.

Published:October 26, 2016

AZ's Groundwater Management Act of 1980

To the “end user” – the Tempe or Tucson homeowner turning on the tap to fill a kettle for a cup of tea – it is all just water. In composition, color and consistency, it is no different from the liquid pouring forth from taps anywhere else in the U.S.

It is clear, clean and plentiful water. A basic building block of an American community.

So, what’s so complicated about that?

Published:November 18, 2016

Groundwater Game Changer

(This is the second of a two-part historical examination of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980. Part 1: A question-and-answer interview with former Gov. Babbitt)

 

Former Arizona Governor and former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recently agreed to talk with the Arizona Department of Water Resources about the landmark Arizona Groundwater Management Act, which 

was passed under his watch as governor in 1980, as well as some related water issues.

Published:November 23, 2016

Plan On It

It takes planning to do planning.

This is not redundant. Planners at the Arizona Department of Water Resources have been charged by Gov. Ducey work with the 22 different “planning areas” around Arizona – regions that have been carved out in some cases because of the locally unique water issues they face -- to refine water-use demand information and work with stakeholders to develop consensus-driven solution sets for future demand and supply imbalances.  

Published:June 8, 2016

ADWR Road Report

Water users in southeastern Arizona drew a little closer on Tuesday to possible resolutions of the tough water issues the region faces.

For the second time in five weeks, Arizona Department of Water Resources staff journeyed to Willcox to hear out the concerns of area residents about their water supplies -- and, to give those residents a chance to flesh out potential resolutions. "You do need to find a balance, it's true," said Melissa DiPeso, a Willcox realtor attending the April 19 sessions. "Our water is getting harder and (our wells) are getting deeper."

Published:April 21, 2016

Wenden area stakeholders vent frustrations at groundwater local meetings

Sometimes it just helps to vent.

Residents of the West Basins Planning area around Wenden, Ariz., arrived at an early afternoon stakeholders meeting on March 28 at the Centennial Community Center to discuss details about the condition of their groundwater supply.

And, to raise some pretty heartfelt concerns about what they fear the future of their groundwater may be.

Published:April 7, 2016

Measuring Arizona’s depth: The starting point for a statewide water plan

It is a cool, breezy-to-windy morning as Paul Ivanich departs west from Phoenix toward the vast “Ranegras Plain” and the hundreds of water wells dotting its sun-parched landscape.

Ivanich and other Water Resources hydrologists and field staff are conducting a “basin sweep,” measuring and analyzing the groundwater levels in wells located in exotic and remote sectors of the Ranegras Plain. Areas known to Water Resources planners by names like “Utting.” And “East of Utting.”

Published:April 4, 2016