SIERRA VISTA, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity and the San Pedro 100 sued Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke today for failing to review and revoke the designation guaranteeing a 100-year water supply for developer Castle & Cooke’s 7,000-home Sierra Vista development.

The homes would rely on groundwater no longer available after a recent Water Adjudication Court ruling. The groundwater feeds the nearby San Pedro River, the last free-flowing river in the Southwest, a vital lifeline for plants and animals across southeastern Arizona.

“Gov. Hobbs and her water department’s refusal to protect the San Pedro condemns the watershed to death and will leave unknowing homeowners with an uncertain water supply and property that’s all but worthless,” said Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center. “It’s unconscionable that they’re willing to hand a blank check to wealthy developers at the expense of a rare, priceless and fragile ecosystem and everyday Arizonans.”

On Aug. 9, 2018, the Arizona Supreme Court allowed the department of water resources to grant Castle & Cooke’s Pueblo Del Sol water company its 100-year designation of adequate water supply without any consideration of then unquantified but congressionally assigned federal reserved water rights for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. The Arizona Supreme Court did so saying that “ADWR is not required to consider unquantified federal reserved water rights under its physical availability or legal availability analysis.”

The court’s ruling acknowledged that when federal reserved water rights were quantified, water department officials must respect them. Dissenting justices noted that “[t]his interpretation defeats the adequate water supply provision’s manifest purpose to proactively protect consumers in Arizona before they purchase property.”

That decades-long legal battle ended on Aug. 25, 2023, when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Mark H. Brain issued a ruling quantifying water rights for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. The ruling mandated that groundwater levels be maintained at nine monitoring wells within the conservation area. Two of those wells have already dropped below their required elevation, in violation of the ruling, and two others are close to being in violation.

The Center included these facts in an unanswered July 16, 2024, complaint filed with the governor and ADWR.

“It’s been a year since the San Pedro water rights were finally quantified and since it’s been known that they were already being violated by over-pumping in Sierra Vista, yet Gov. Hobbs and Buschatzke have done nothing to reevaluate and revoke Pueblo Del Sol’s designation,” said Silver. “They’ve chosen to leave the San Pedro River unprotected and future Sierra Vista-area homeowners vulnerable to the inevitable catastrophe of their taps running dry.”