Touted as a conservation success story, new legislation in Arizona is actually a ploy to resume unsustainable development in areas that are running out of water. It foolishly seeks to override hard physical limits with paper water credits, displacing wildlife and farmland in service to sprawl.
by Phil Cafaro
In June 2025, the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) imposed a moratorium on new building permits for subdivisions in some areas in and around Phoenix, after new groundwater models revealed insufficient supply to support further development. At the same time, complaints have been increasing about the rising cost of housing in the state. This was a golden opportunity for Arizonans to rethink the state’s uncritical acceptance of endless growth. Instead, once again, its leaders chose to stick their heads in the desert sand.
State Senate Bill 1611 — the so-called “Ag-to-Urban Groundwater Conservation Program” — was passed in July specifically to override the moratorium on new building. It allows developers to substitute “groundwater credits” for proof of physical groundwater availability. This workaround allows unsustainable growth to continue, under the guise of “conservation.”
SB 1611 allows farmers near Phoenix to permanently relinquish their irrigation rights, dewatering farms to effectively circumvent the moratorium imposed by ADWR. Real estate interests understood the stakes. “This will alleviate some of that pressure … now they can get their certificates of assured water supply,” one industry leader explained. Another said bluntly, “this will be good for us”, capturing the law’s underlying purpose of serving developers, not the public or the environment.
Governor Katie Hobbs hailed the bill as a “historic bipartisan deal,” and it did indeed have strong support in both major political parties. But behind the bipartisan triumphalism is a growing ecological deficit. Arizona’s leaders remain unwilling to limit growth, even as water becomes scarcer, rivers dry up, and farms and native species are displaced.
Paper water, real sprawl
With an estimated 425,000 acres of farmland eligible for conversion, SB 1611 could enable up to one million new homes at suburban densities. That means bulldozing productive farmland, removing natural vegetation, and consuming ever more water to support lawns, pools, and golf courses in arid zones where the groundwater is already depleted. As a result, habitat destruction will increase, wildlife will lose access to water and migratory corridors, and aquifer depletion will accelerate. Human expansion continues to push other species aside — and the politicians responsible refuse to acknowledge the tradeoffs.
The truth is simple: no amount of policy tinkering can solve Arizona’s water crisis if population growth continues. Every new home, every new subdivision, every new resident increases total demand for water — not just for household use, but for electricity, food, transportation, and landscaping.
While per capita water use has declined in recent decades, aggregate demand keeps rising because the population keeps growing. Arizona’s population is now over 7.5 million — triple what it was three decades ago — and still increasing. To end that population growth, Arizona must stop promoting endless suburban development, and the U.S. federal government must adopt responsible immigration policies that reduce inflows and allow the U.S. population to stabilize.
Endless growth is draining Arizona dry
Political leaders in Arizona and elsewhere in the arid southwestern U.S. may continue to celebrate growth, but reality will impose its own limits. The aquifers will run dry. The rivers will stop flowing (as many already have). The land will no longer support the people pouring into it. If Americans are serious about securing a sustainable future, we must confront the truth: water conservation alone is not enough. We must end population growth — in Arizona and across the United States.
That means saying “no” to more sprawl, ending unsustainable economic practices, and shifting federal immigration policy toward population stabilization. Without those changes, every new environmental protection policy — no matter how well-intentioned — will be undone by sheer numbers. As long as growth continues, the water crisis in the American southwest will get worse.
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