"Arizona’s lax water laws let corporate farms pump unlimited groundwater to grow alfalfa for cattle overseas, even as local families spend their savings drilling new wells."
"This far out, there’s no such thing as municipal city water. The afternoon desert sun beats down, hard, as we drive up the gravel road to Tom and Illene Wood’s reddish-brown adobe-style stucco house, nestled off-the-grid within the shrubs and mountains of the Sonoran Desert, with cacti and mastiffs standing guard. Like many residents of rural America, they dug a well. That 400-foot well cost them $10,000. But by 2011, the land had shifted, and they had to dig a new well to the tune of $15,000. Last year, that well ran dry. They’re now on their third well, a $130,000 hit to their retirement funds. Out here, alfalfa might run the aquifers dry.
Tom and Illene have been in La Paz County, Arizona since 1986. We’re sitting in their kitchen, which is adorned with Indigenous artifacts and a wagon repurposed into a bar cart. They built the house in 1998, on a piece of land large enough to also store their small plane and ATVs.
“The water has disappeared, literally, from the area. It just keeps going away,” Illene says. She says she thinks it is because of the alfalfa and other crops being grown in the valley. Her son-in-law and daughter live across the road, and their well also ran dry."
Nina B. Elkadi reports for Sentient October 10, 2025.
Advertisement 
