Public Records Requests
Complaints to ADWR
These are records obtained from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) in response to public records requests seeking records relating to complaints, tips, or other contacts ADWR had received, from January 2015 through April 26, 2021, relating to concerns over declining groundwater levels in the Douglas and Willcox groundwater basins.
These records contain both complaints from community members, and also some internal ADWR emails detailing aspects of the agency's responses to these unfolding groundwater crises.
Douglas INA Transfer of Irrigation Rights
These are records obtained from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) detailing applications (submitted to the agency from January 2015 to April 22, 2021) to "substitute irrigable acres due to limiting conditions" in the Douglas Irrigation Non-Expansion Area (INA).
The approval of these applications by ADWR allowed growers in the INA to transfer portions of their existing grandfathered irrigation rights over to other properties within the INA.
In some cases, the approval of these applications allowed some of the biggest water users in the INA to commence new irrigation on large swaths of land that had no grandfathered irrigation rights-- thus substantially expanding irrigation within the irrigation non-expansion area.