SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In the American West, dwindling water supplies are a major issue. As states fight over Colorado River allocations and underground aquifers are pumped faster than they can be replenished, water is becoming a commodity.
"Tapped" is the podcast about water in Arizona. It's produced by member station AZPM in Tucson. In this excerpt, we will hear about the long history between Arizona and Saudi Arabia, one that eventually led to a Saudi-backed company buying and leasing thousands of acres so it could grow alfalfa that would then be transported halfway around the world to feed a dairy industry that caused its own wells to dry up.
Here is the show's host, Zac Ziegler, and his reporting partner on this episode, Christopher Conover.
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ZAC ZIEGLER: When we left, political geographer Dr. Natalie Koch had just told us how, in the early 2000s, Saudi Arabia noticed it was drawing down its aquifers at an unsustainable rate.
CHRISTOPHER CONOVER: So what's a country to do when its water is running out?
NATALIE KOCH: They shifted those subsidies away from, like, direct subsidies for domestic production of these water-intensive crops to helping them buy foreign land.
CONOVER: And one of the places that they most notably begun buying land was in a small county on Arizona's western edge.
HOLLY IRWIN: I started working on water in 2015, and it was when the story about the Saudis broke out.
CONOVER: That's Holly Irwin, the longest-serving member of the La Paz County Board of Supervisors.
IRWIN: There was a reporter down, and he broke the story about the foreign companies and, you know, coming and purchasing land for water resources and stuff. And, you know, it was shortly after that that I started getting phone calls from residents that were having issues with their wells. And one specifically was right up the road from where Fondomonte's at, you know, a little church. They've been out of water now for about four or five years, and they're directly impacted by, you know, not just the purchase of that property, but they have probably quadrupled in size since they've been there, as far as their production goes.
ZIEGLER: If you've paid even a little attention to Western water issues, you know Fondomonte, the Saudi-backed company that owns around 10,000 acres in La Paz County's Butler Valley. We contacted Fondomonte by email, phone. We even walked up to the gate of their main farming facility near Vicksburg and chatted with the security guard. They declined our request for an interview multiple times.
One good thing that came out of that drive, though - have you ever smelled fresh alfalfa? Well, imagine what 10,000 acres of it smells like. It was pleasant enough to cover the smell of the cattle feedlot on the other side of the road.
On paper, Fondomonte doesn't look like a foreign company. It is incorporated in Arizona, and its offices are in the Phoenix area. But when you look in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual report that discloses companies with foreign ties, Fondomonte is listed as a Saudi-tied company. Now, that data is quite out of date. The most recent version is from 2021, and it says Fondomonte owns about 1 1/2 percent of what it owns today.
IRWIN: We know, at least for the example with the Saudis, that they're growing hay because they can do it all year long. They're shipping it back to their country. And not only were they doing it on the land that they own, but they were also doing it on land that was leased by the State Land Department, for crying out loud.
ZIEGLER: At its height, Fondomonte also held leases on about 3,000 acres of state land. Earlier this year, Governor Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that many of those leases were terminated and the rest won't be renewed when they're up.
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CONOVER: Now for Holly's other statement - when we made that visit to the Vicksburg farm, we took note of the USDOT numbers on the doors of the trucks. Those numbers, which say either USDOT or MC, are the indication that the company has filed a tariff with the federal government which lets them haul across state lines. A quick note of thanks to my stepdad, who regulated trucking for the federal government and then retired to start his own company to help companies get those numbers and taught me all about the industry.
Checking those numbers, we found that they're registered to two companies - Fondomonte Arizona in Salome and Fondomonte, Calif., a few miles away in Blythe. Both are authorized to only haul for themselves, meaning if you need an 18-wheeler to haul something for you, they can't do it.
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CONOVER: Part of the authorization for the Fondomonte trucks covers agriculture - so the alfalfa hay they grow - and intermodal. Intermodal, for those who aren't familiar, are those big shipping containers you see on trucks and trains headed to and from seaports. And that is how hay is sent from the U.S. West to Saudi Arabia.
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CONOVER: It should also be noted that the mailing address for both Fondomonte corporations is in Goodyear, Ariz. And it looks like they have safe trucks and drivers, given that there are no records of accidents or violations within the last two years. That's the length of time covered by the federal reports. Natalie Koch says the scale of the operation isn't surprising.
KOCH: That has been a major part of the operations for a long time. So you can't even really just call them just a dairy company. They are an agricultural commodity logistics firm. So from the very beginning, they've said, we're going to own all our trucks. We're going to own all our distribution networks. We will own the whole system.
ZIEGLER: We heard colloquially while we were in La Paz County that not all of the alfalfa grown on Fondomonte land leaves the country. Some is sold to locals to feed their livestock, but the majority leaves the area. You've probably guessed by now, but these are not pickup trucks. They're commercial trucks, semis with fully loaded trailers of hay bales, sometimes even pulling two trailers. And Vicksburg Road, also known as Highway 72, is by no means an interstate highway.
IRWIN: Because of the amounts of trucks that were going back and forth on the road, this proposed a big problem for the conditions of our road that we have to take care of. For example, we just sunk - I think it was last year or the year before - 750,000 into a little stretch of road because there's so many trucks that are, you know, going on Vicksburg.
CONOVER: Seven-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars may not sound like much for a government, but keep this in mind - this year, La Paz County's total budget is $50 million. At this point, you may be asking, why can they do this? The answer is Arizona water law. If you own land outside of what's known as an active management area or an irrigation non-expansion area, you're basically in the Wild West.
IRWIN: They own the land. It would be like somebody - you know, let's say that you want to have grass in your backyard, and the person down the road, who's concerned about water, doesn't want you to have that and wants you to put in gravel. Well, for the most part, people are going to be like, hey, you're not going to tell me what I can do with my property. And it's unfortunate because it's really affecting the area. Just the fact that the word is already out there now - that you can come to La Paz, you can purchase property in any one of these unrestricted basins, sink one well, 20 wells if you want to, you know, into an area and just pump water out - and there's nothing we can do about it.
KOCH: What makes that particularly appealing is also the fact that La Paz County doesn't have proper - well, I would call it proper - regulation on groundwater tapping.
CONOVER: Political geographer, Natalie Koch.
KOCH: They can tap as much water as they want from the aquifers without any kind of regulation. All they need to do is have permission to drill new wells.
ZIEGLER: A state registry shows Fondomonte owns 30 wells. The shallowest go down 566 feet. The deepest - more than 1,500 feet. The Arizona Department of Water Resources has monitoring stations to the south and west of Fondomonte. They all showed water levels around 300 feet deep when Fondomonte bought the land. In the decade that passed since, levels have dropped anywhere from 40 to 140 feet. For Fondomonte, a dropping water table isn't a big deal. Half of its wells go more than 1,000 feet deep.
CONOVER: But in La Paz County, the average depth of a class of well the state refers to as domestic wells is about 240 feet. Now, not to get too far into the technical weeds, but a domestic well is one used for households or watering stock or noncommercial agriculture. The owners of those wells, because they don't pump significant amounts of water in the eyes of state law, don't have to be reported to the state and aren't regulated as a result.
DETROW: That was the podcast "Tapped," produced by member station AZPM. It's hosted by Zac Ziegler with his reporting partner on the episode, Christopher Conover. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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