Arizona’s lawyer normal has sued a Saudi-owned farm working an enormous hay operation in the midst of the Arizona desert, alleging that the enterprise is hastening the lack of the agricultural neighborhood’s quickly depleting groundwater provide.
The farm owned by Fondomonte makes use of billions of gallons of groundwater in La Paz County every year to irrigate the desert to develop hay, which it then ships again to the Center East to feed dairy cows.
The Saudi-owned operation first got here to mild in a 2015 investigation by the Heart for Investigative Reporting and rapidly sparked outrage in the state, spurring nationwide and even worldwide media protection.
Arizona Legal professional Common Kris Mayes instructed CIR final 12 months that she was contemplating suing to cease the injury. On Wednesday, she introduced the general public nuisance lawsuit. It asks a choose to cease Fondomonte from extreme pumping and require the corporate to ascertain an abatement fund, which might cowl damages incurred by neighbors, akin to their wells going dry or their water high quality worsening because the groundwater is depleted.
“Arizona regulation is obvious: No firm has the suitable to hazard a whole neighborhood’s well being and security for its personal acquire,” Mayes mentioned in a press release.
Arizona Division of Water Sources Director Tom Buschatzke initially mentioned CIR’s 2015 investigation was making “hay” and overblowing the problem, writing within the Arizona Republic that “there’s a ample water provide out there on this space of La Paz County for at the least the following 100 years.”
However home wells of neighbors round Fondomonte quickly started to go dry. The farm and its neighbors had been profiled within the movie The Seize, a feature-length documentary about world meals and water conflicts, reported and produced by the Heart for Investigative Reporting.
In 2017, the effectively on the Friendship Baptist Church subsequent to the farm went dry, requiring the pastor to truck in bottled water for baptismals and different occasions. John Weisser, a rancher close to the Saudi farm, instructed the filmmaking crew that his effectively went dry, too, “as a result of the water’s dropping. There’s not sufficient rain that would replenish it.”
Wayne Wade, who lived in a trailer park close to the farm, reported the identical downside.
“The water stage went beneath my pump, and the pump burned up and melted the casing,” Wade mentioned. “I believe everyone is aware of the issue, however I don’t know the best way to appropriate it. I can’t pay for a high-powered lawyer. Neither can any of my pals.”
La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin has been asking for assist since information of the Saudi-owned farm first broke almost 10 years in the past. Now that the state’s lawyer normal has stepped in, “I really feel that La Paz County lastly has somebody preventing for us,” Irwin mentioned. “My constituents are experiencing actual damages from large groundwater pumping.”
Mayes, who was elected in 2022, mentioned permitting Fondomonte and different mega farms in rural Arizona to pump limitless quantities of water without charge past the electrical energy payments they pay to function the wells has been a failure of the state authorities.
“Why are we permitting a Saudi-owned company to stay a straw within the floor and suck a lot of our water out and ship alfalfa again to Saudi Arabia and never cost them a dime for the water? It’s bonkers,” Mayes instructed Reveal final 12 months. “Water in Arizona is life. Our very survival as a state is determined by our doing higher in the case of water.”
Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Saudi Arabia was the world’s sixth-largest exporter of wheat. However as its groundwater was drained, the federal government instructed firms to go abroad in the hunt for new water provides.
“Fondomonte got here to Arizona to extract water at an unreasonable and extreme price as a result of doing so was banned in its residence nation—one other arid desert with restricted water,” the lawsuit alleges. “Fondomonte is making the most of Arizona’s failure to guard its valuable groundwater useful resource.”
Fondomonte mentioned in a press release that the allegations are “completely unfounded.”
“We’ll defend any potential motion in opposition to Fondomonte and our rights vigorously earlier than the competent authorities,” the assertion mentioned.
