Lawmakers could stop Arizona’s next water war. But will they?

This time we are not fighting California. It’s a family feud right here in Arizona. Urban versus rural. Phoenix and Tucson ganging up on the rural communities along the Colorado River in western Arizona.

The opening shots have been fired by out-of-state speculators buying up farms along the river. Once they have these “water farms” in hand, they intend to strip the water from the land and send it 200 miles up the Central Arizona Project canal to developers in Maricopa and Pima counties.

The biggest play to date is being run by a New York speculator, Water Asset Management, LLC. This group has taken control of a large portion of an irrigation district near Bullhead City in Mohave County. It has offered to sell 14,000 acre-feet per year of water to the Central Arizona Project for subdivisions in central Arizona, enough water for more than 40,000 new houses.

Before this land and water rush takes off, water farm dealers must obtain permission from the Central Arizona Project to use its canal that runs from the river into central Arizona. They are counting on success for a simple reason: the Central Arizona Project is a public agency entirely controlled by elected officials in the Phoenix-Tucson urban corridor.

Construction of the Central Arizona Project began in 1973 when political leaders were focused on the needs of the three urban counties, Maricopa, Pinal and Pima. Rural communities outside the urban corridor were largely ignored, left without a voice in water management. In the half century since, that has not changed.