PHOENIX – January 16, 2026 – Rural Arizonans are showing their appreciation of Gov. Katie Hobbs for recent actions taken to protect their groundwater supplies from unlimited and unregulated pumping, with two bipartisan local elected officials applauding her continued action to protect rural groundwater in a series of ads running in Arizona. (30-sec ad here; 15-sec ad here.)

Santa Cruz County Supervisor John Fanning, a Democrat, and La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin, a Republican, commended the Governor for her most recent action to take the first formal steps with the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) to explore management needs across rural Arizona, to include the Willcox Groundwater Basin and the Ranegras Plain Groundwater Basin, which ADWR designated as the state’s latest AMA on Friday.

“Water is life. It doesn’t matter if you’re a D, an R, an I,” Fanning said. “I know Gov Hobbs has been a champion for rural groundwater. It’s important that we preserve the water that we have in Southern Arizona.”

Arizona statutes have provided tools to ADWR to monitor, report, and make determinations about groundwater management needs across the state for four decades, but previous administrations have largely ignored those tools.

“Groundwater is a real issue. It’s bipartisan and it affects everybody,” said Irwin. “I hate to talk about the party to party or whatever, but I tried to work with the previous administration that is the same party as mine and I literally got nowhere. It took a change in leadership.”

“Rural Arizona has been in desperate need of strong leadership and support from the state government to provide protections for diminishing groundwater supplies,” said Christopher Kuzdas, Arizona Water Program Director, for Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDF Action). “We have been working with elected officials, farmers, business owners and residents from across the state for years to secure meaningful water protections, and now thanks to Gov. Hobbs and her team, rural communities are finally being heard and getting meaningful support from their own government.”

Recently, ADWR took the first steps toward establishing a rural groundwater active management area in the Ranegras Plain basin in La Paz County. This action came after Governor Hobbs visited the basin to see firsthand the impacts of unlimited groundwater pumping, like dried wells and sinking land.

“It took a lot for a new Governor to come in and acknowledge the issue, number one,” said Irwin. “Number two, take the bull by the horns and just go after the issue and, ‘How are we going to address this.’ We work for the people, and we have to be able to fight for them, and that’s what I feel like she’s done. She’s come to La Paz, she’s visited, she’s met with real people who have lost their wells. And she’s acting and doing something about that. So for her having to do that and take the guts to do that I commend her and I’m very grateful.”

Gov. Hobbs has taken additional strong actions to secure Arizona’s water future and protect groundwater supplies including ADWR’s recent decision to designate the Willcox Groundwater Basin Active Management Area; issuing Groundwater Savings Credits under the state’s new “Ag-to-Urban” Groundwater Conservation Program; and dedicating $60 million toward groundwater conservation and science.

EDF Action in Arizona and our partners from across the state will continue to push for bipartisan solutions to their groundwater management needs as the 2026 Legislative Session begins and ADWR continues its assessments of the Ranegras Plain basin.