GRANITE MOUNTAIN ESTATES — Kara Peterson and her family built their dream home on a terraced hillside 16 years ago.
She’s right near the Prescott National Forest, with sweeping views of the distant San Francisco Peaks. She feels like she is camping, but in the comfort of her own home.
“I want to be able to escape,” she said. “And I get to escape to my own house.”
But two years ago, that sunny dream began to darken. One July day, the emails and texts from neighbors started, one after the other.
“We're out of water. We're out of water,” they said.
Then, two hours later, her faucet went dry.
The outage lasted two days, according to the Granite Mountain Water Company. Records filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission show the water company, which serves nearly 160 customers, faces an uncertain water supply. Since September, the company has been hauling water by truck from Prescott and storing it in tanks atop the hill.
Dewey Levie, secretary-treasurer of the water company, told ABC15 that a well that used to pump 120 gallons-per-minute is now pumping only 18 gallons-per-minute. He’s tried drilling additional wells.
“In the last year and a half, we've drilled five essentially dry holes,” he said.
His late father, Paul, was a real-estate developer who bought a 700-acre horse farm in 1968 and sold lots for homes.
The water company was started to serve the homes in the unincorporated area near the rugged Granite Mountain Wilderness. The Levie family has deep roots in the area; the streets are named after his relatives.
"My dad had told me we had plenty of water up here, and I thought that we had, but our well went dry,” he said.
But new home building in the area, coupled with the drought, have caused groundwater levels to drop, making it harder to find wells that produce enough water to meet demand.
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The water trucked in from Prescott flows into 111,000-gallon storage tanks high on the hill. The cost of that hauled water will now be passed onto customers. Last month, the company got approval from the Arizona Corporation Commission to raise rates to recoup the cost. The commission also gave the water company until the end of the year to propose long-term solutions.
"If they use a lot, they're going to be paying a big bill,” Levie said.
He has a larger concern beyond increased cost.
“I'm very worried when spring and summer come, that if people start doing watering outside and things, there's just not going to be water,” he said.
Some neighbors, like Alex Gaston, are taking their own precautions. He recently paid $12,000 for a 3,000-gallon water storage tank, complete with rain capture.
“Buying a home in Arizona, we knew there was a water problem,” he said.
He’s not optimistic things will improve.
“I think we're out of water,” he said.
As for Kara Peterson, she’s already made changes.
“We’ve gotten rid of 16 plants,” she said.
But that might not be enough; she fears what the future holds.
"Everybody's panicked because a lot of people are like my husband and I. We put all of our retirement money into our home,” she said.
Levie said he’s working on a long-term solution. He said he has approached neighbors with private wells to try to get permission to tap into their water and share it with other customers. He said he’s exploring all options to find more water.
The water scarcity he’s experiencing is not isolated.
The ABC15 Investigators have detailed how water availability is a growing problem in parts of rural Arizona. Earlier this year, ABC15 profiled the small town of Salome – about an hour west of Wickenburg – where one of two wells owned by the Salome Water Company is going dry. That company, like Granite Mountain, also got approval for a price hike recently from the Arizona Corporation Commission. Salome was also ordered to come back to the commission later this year with long-term solutions.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at: anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook
