A small Arizona town is sinking as megafarms drill deeper wells for water — with no end in sight. Who’s at fault for this looming ‘train wreck’?

The culprit? The depletion of groundwater via wells, which supplies the town with its drinking water. But Wenden isn’t sinking because its 412 residents — as of the last count — are guzzling too much H20 or taking extra-long showers.

Instead, with climate change-related droughts contributing to falling water levels in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) — which supplies seven states and Mexico — groundwater is being used to pick up the slack [2]. In addition, megafarms, including one Saudi-owned alfalfa farm — the likes of which reportedly contribute “hundreds of millions of dollars to the Arizona agriculture economy” — are draining an inordinate amount of groundwater [3].

“Just the way air keeps the tire pumped up, water keeps the land pumped up,” Jay Famiglietti, an Arizona State University (ASU) professor and coauthor of a 2025 study about the water supply, told ABC 15 Arizona.

NBC, meanwhile, noted that corporate farms face little accountability in Arizona. As groundwater regulations are non-existent in 80% of the state, megafarms face no obligation to report how much water they use.

“It’s absolutely out of balance,” Gary Saiter, who heads the Wenden Domestic Water Improvement District, told the outlet. “It’s a trainwreck waiting to happen.”

How to sink a town by depleting its groundwater

The ASU study coauthored by Famiglietti and published in May, warned that “groundwater is disappearing much faster than Colorado River streamflow and CRB surface water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead,” even as it has become “increasingly relied upon as surface water supplies dwindle.”

For Wenden, the effects of the increased reliance on groundwater are palpable. Not only is the town sinking, but it’s hitting residents in the pocketbook too.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told NBC that megafarms like Fondomonte — a subsidiary of Almarai, a Saudi Arabian dairy company — drill wells up to 2,000 feet below ground, depleting the aquifer for locals.

As a result, Rob McDermott, who runs an RV park in Wenden, said that he has had to dig a new, deeper well, which cost him $120,000. He also estimated that he uses, at most, about 4,000 gallons of water a day. NBC reported that megafarms like Fondomonte are equipped to use that same amount per minute.

In a statement to NBC, Fondomonte says it makes “a conscious effort to manage water use,” and boasted that it has created more than 1,750 jobs in the county.

Mayes has filed a nuisance lawsuit against the company for “already inflict(ing) harm on the entire community” and because “its ongoing conduct will exacerbate this damage.” She called it “the ultimate David versus Goliath situation” and added that, in 2023, Fondomonte withdrew enough groundwater to provide for 93,000 homes.

The New York Post, referencing Department of Agriculture stats, noted that within the last decade, foreign-owned megafarms have nearly doubled their footprint in Arizona, expanding to almost 3 million acres [4].

Compounding the concerns brought on by climate change and megafarms, Mayes says that she knows of one hedge fund that has bought land and water rights in the area for $100 million because, she believes, “at some point in the future, they’ve calculated they can sell that water to Phoenix.”

Where regulations failed

All of the concerns around groundwater depletion beg the question: do no laws exist to regulate it? As it turns out, they do exist.

The 1980 Arizona Groundwater Code “recognized the need to aggressively manage the state’s finite groundwater resources to support the growing economy.” As such, legislators identified seven designated Active Management Areas (AMAs) and other Irrigation Non-Expansion Areas (INAs). The idea was to ensure that “no more groundwater is being withdrawn than is being replaced annually,” to impose restrictions on groundwater withdrawal and to ensure usage is reported to authorities — and achieve it all by 2025.

But the code didn’t give the state’s Department of Water Resources enough tools to make it happen, one of its authors, water policy expert Kathleen Ferris, told the Arizona Capitol Times [5]. “I don’t think that we anticipated the extraordinary growth that has taken place in central Arizona,” she said, “and I don’t think we anticipated climate change.”

New conservation initiatives, to pick up where the 1980 code leaves off, were debated earlier this year, but despite bipartisan local support for a plan put forward by Gov. Katie Hobbs, state Republicans — including Rep. Gail Griffin, the House Committee of Natural Resources chair — reportedly wouldn’t consider it [6].

Travis Lingenfelter, Supervisor for Mohave County, told Phoenix’s KJZZ that Griffin is “beholden” to the Arizona Farm Bureau, which doesn’t “want any regulations because it is going to affect them” as well as the farms they represent — even if that means hurting “multigenerational small businesses and our residences” in the process.

Preserving the future

As Wenden residents continue to sound the alarm about their sinking town, the 2025 ASU study recommends “shifting away from water-intensive crops … to more water-saving crops,” as well as “shifting from inefficient flood irrigation to other, more efficient methods such as drip and deep-drip irrigation,” to reduce groundwater depletion.

Ferris, meanwhile, added that her advice boils down to “stop allowing new uses on groundwater” and “figure out ways to make what we’ve got more sustainable.”

If nothing is done, Famiglietti predicts that within 40 years groundwater will be so scarce and expensive to extract that “only the wealthiest farmers and the biggest farms will be able to afford to pump [it].

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“Much of that groundwater is irreplaceable,” he said. “There will be less available for future generations.” At Moneywise, we consider it our responsibility to produce accurate and trustworthy content people can rely on to inform their financial decisions. We rely on vetted sources such as government data, financial records and expert interviews and highlight credible third-party reporting when appropriate.