By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | October 2, 2023 at 9:16 p.m. EDT
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday that her administration would effectively kick a Saudi-owned alfalfa farm off a critical stretch of state land, a forceful step that speaks to the firestorm of controversy over foreign extraction of natural resources as well as deepening dilemmas over water scarcity as climate change dries out the West.
The move will prevent the Saudi-owned company, Fondomonte Arizona, from pumping groundwater that could one day serve as backup for booming urban areas. Currently, the company uses the water to grow alfalfa to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows.
Fondomonte came under fierce bipartisan criticism on the campaign trail last year, and Hobbs, a Democrat who took office in January, has been under pressure to act. In a statement, she said the state land department had terminated one lease held by the company and decided not to renew three other leases when they expire in February. The leases cover about 3,500 acres of desert terrain west of Phoenix, in an area called the Butler Valley.
A Washington Post investigation in July found that state land planners have been raising alarms about Fondomonte’s presence in the Butler Valley since its arrival in 2015 under then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. At the time, planners warned that the water there might one day have a better use, and that the state was not charging sufficiently for access to the land, given the value of the dwindling natural resource underneath it. Experts within the state land department also raised concerns in subsequent years about upgrades and other changes made by Fondomonte to the land, according to emails released in response to a public records request.
The Post previously reported that aides to Hobbs prepared a memo in June recommending against renewal of the leases next year. (Continue to The Washington Post for the full article)
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