TUCSON, Ariz.― Conservationists today sued Gov. Katie Hobbs and Arizona Department of Water for Resources Director Tom Buschatzke for failing to protect the imperiled San Pedro River.

Gov. Hobbs and Buschatzke have neglected to respond to a September 2023 petition from the San Pedro Alliance calling for the creation of an active management area in the Upper San Pedro Basin.

“Gov. Hobbs is making a mockery of Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act by refusing to put any restrictions on San Pedro River-killing groundwater pumping,” said Center for Biological Diversity co-founder Robin Silver. “Her inaction is causing an existential crisis that will lead to the demise of the river and the plants and animals whose existence depends on its flows.”

The San Pedro River is the last free-flowing desert river in the Southwest. Endangered species that depend on it include the Southwestern willow flycatcher, Huachuca water umbel, desert pupfish, loach minnow, spikedace, yellow-billed cuckoo, Arizona eryngo and northern Mexican garter snake. Millions of neo-tropical songbirds depend on the San Pedro to complete their yearly migrations. Groundwater pumping from the local over-drafted aquifer is killing the San Pedro.

Arizona’s 1980 Groundwater Management Act requires designation of an active management area “to preserve the existing supply of groundwater for future needs” and requires the Department of Water Resources to certify that developments within management areas have adequate water supplies for 100 years. The law also stipulates that the governor’s water resources director “shall…[a]dminister all laws relating to groundwater.”

Today’s lawsuit includes a request to the court to remedy Attorney General Kris Mayes’ April 17, 2023, observation that Buschatzke has been violating the law where “ADWR has twice studied the Upper San Pedro Basin…But two studies of a single basin in a forty-year period does not satisfy the statutory duty to periodically review ‘all areas which are not included within an active management area,’ as A.R.S. § 45-412(C) requires.”

The San Pedro Alliance previously petitioned for a San Pedro active management area on October 10, 2005. In denying that petition, the state water department ignored the existence of the San Pedro River and its federal reserved water rights. The department also ignored the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's objection to a massive development in Benson. The EPA determined that “the project may result in substantial and unacceptable impacts to aquatic resources of national importance [the San Pedro River].”

Since the 2005 petition denial, multiple reports either document or predict the demise of the San Pedro River (MacNish et al 2009, GeoSystems 2010, Lacher 2011, 2018, USGS 2010, 2014, 2019, Integrated Hydro 2016, 2019, Eastoe (2017, 2018, 2020, and Meixner 2018).

Federal water rights for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area were finally quantified in 2023. Under that ruling, in order for federal reserved water rights to be fulfilled, minimum water levels must be maintained at nine monitoring wells. That mandate is already being violated at the Cottonwood and Summers monitoring wells.

Also as a result of the quantification of federal water rights, the state now needs to revise at least 67 basin adequacy certificates, including for the 28,000-home Vigneto development in Benson, to stop wells from continued theft of water from the San Pedro.

“Under Buschatzke’s leadership, the state has permitted thousands of new wells in the Upper San Pedro Basin in spite of numerous studies showing the basin is being severely over-drafted and the San Pedro River is increasingly being damaged,” said Tricia Gerrodette, president of San Pedro 100. “As the governor does nothing, our ability to preserve the river for the future is being foreclosed. We need an active management area designation now.”

The San Pedro Alliance is a coalition of local, regional, Arizona, national and international member organizations dedicated to protecting the San Pedro by establishing an active management area.