Breaking: Attorney General sues Fondomonte. Next, Riverview.

This morning, I was sent a Zoom link to a press conference where Attorney General Kris Mayes announced her nuisance lawsuit against Fondomonte, the Saudi-owned megafarm in La Paz County.

As I previously reported, nuisance cases against Fondomonte and Riverview were first hinted at earlier in the year, and then unofficially announced last month.

Mayes’ “public nuisance” claim rests on the argument that the water use of certain megafarms “injures the health and interferes with the entire community’s comfortable enjoyment of life or property” because of “declining groundwater levels and escalating land subsidence.”

Arizona had already cancelled its state land leases with the megafarm, but the company still privately owns thousands of acres of farmland where they are legally pumping unlimited amounts of groundwater for alfalfa — which they then ship to Saudi Arabia, where growing alfalfa is outlawed because of aquifer depletion.

One issue brought up the AG was that Arizona’s CAP canal — the main source of water for Central Arizona, delivered from the Colorado River — runs through the area of land subsidence created by Fondomonte’s irrigation. The land subsidence, she said, could damage the canal and put millions of Arizonans in danger.

And what about Riverview, here in the Willcox and Douglas Basins?

AG Mayes said they hired a separate hydrogeologist for this area and a separate case is being investigated. She mentioned multiple times during the press conference that Fondomonte and Riverview are her two biggest concerns.

The Attorney General acknowledged that there is prior case law which complicates groundwater nuisance claims, but she believes she is on the right side of the law.

When Capitol scribe Howie Fischer asked Mayes why her suit against Fondomonte didn’t include a request for injunction (an immediate order for the megafarm to stop operations until the case is settled), the AG said that she wanted to win the case — implying a lack of clear legal authority for a full-stop injunction.

Instead, the case requests the following relief:

In other words:
Declare Fondomonte’s pumping a nuisance, order them to reduce their “excessive” pumping, and pay for the damage already caused to local residents.

Presumably, similar relief would be sought in a case against Riverview — but we’ll see.

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