On its web site, Greenstone describes itself as “a water company” and as “a developer and owner of reliable, sustainable water supplies.” Its CEO, Mike Schlehuber, beforehand labored for Vidler Water Company—one other agency that primarily brokers water provide—in addition to Summit Global Management, an organization that invests in water suppliers and water rights. Greenstone’s managing director and vice-president, Mike Malano—a former realtor based mostly in Phoenix who stays “active in the Arizona development community,” per his firm bio—received himself elected to the board of the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district, a quasi-governmental group that oversees the distribution of water for agriculture within the area.
Irwin was horrified. She felt that an organization with ties to huge banks and actual property builders, posing as a farm, had infiltrated her small city and offered off its most valuable useful resource.
The deal received’t have an instantaneous affect on Cibola’s residents. It doesn’t have an effect on the municipal water provide. But she worries that the switch would be the first of many. And if an increasing number of farms are fallowed to feed water to cities, what’s going to change into of rural cities alongside the river?
“It’ll be like Owens Valley,” she mentioned, referring to the water seize that impressed the film Chinatown. In the early twentieth century, brokers working for the town of Los Angeles, posing as farmers or ranchers, purchased up land within the valley and diverted its water to maintain their metropolis, abandoning a dustbowl.
By permitting the Greenstone deal to undergo, “I’m afraid we’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she mentioned.
The Colorado River, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, has declined by about 20 % because the flip of the century, amid essentially the most extreme drought the West has seen in 1,200 years. In a painfully negotiated deal, Arizona, Nevada, and California agreed to cut back the quantity of water they draw from the river by 13 % by means of 2026. Experts warned that even deeper cuts can be vital within the coming decade, however states are presently deadlocked over a longer-term conservation plan.
“With ongoing shortages on the river, driven by climate change, Colorado River water is going to become very valuable,” mentioned Rhett Larson, a professor of water regulation at Arizona State University. “Anyone who understands this dynamic thinks, ‘Well, if I could buy Colorado River water rights, that’s more valuable than owning oil in this country at this stage.’”
Though the worth Queen Creek paid for the water was exceptional—amounting to greater than $11,500 per acre-foot—attorneys and water consultants in Arizona instructed the Guardian it will in all probability promote for much more right now.
The means of promoting and transferring the water, nevertheless, may be bureaucratic and complex. In most instances, an organization like Greenstone must first persuade fellow landowners of their native irrigation district to permit the sale, after which safe approvals from the state division of water assets and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the federal company that manages water within the West.
What Irwin and plenty of of Cibola’s residents didn’t understand was that of their sleepy, riverside city, a choose group of farmers and landowners had been working for years to facilitate such offers.
‘His Dream Was to Sell This Water’
Irrigation districts, because the identify suggests, are designed to distribute water for irrigation throughout the US West. These districts had been shaped within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as cooperatives, permitting farmers to pool assets to develop water infrastructure. In the Colorado River basin, the districts contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to ship water flowing by means of federal infrastructure to farms and ranches.
Farmers are typically possessive of their valuable water, defined Susanna Eden of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. Most irrigation districts are set as much as maintain water for farming—and to maintain it inside their jurisdictions.