Water is facing a squeeze as part of Arizona's budget shortfall for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2025.
The Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, or WIFA, is criticizing Governor Katie Hobbs' budget proposal as not going far enough when it comes to enough. The agency, which is described as an independent state authority on water on its website, was promised $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 to, over the course of three years, invest in long-term water augmentation.
In Casa Grande, south of Phoenix in rural Pinal County, five generations of Caywoods have farmed their land with alfalfa, cotton, and other crops. They've farmed through periods of easy water access, and now, so-called megadroughts.
Nancy Caywood, owner of Caywood Farms, says she and her family have struggled to figure out how to get enough water to their crops.
"We just haven't been getting as much rain and snowpack as we'd like to see, and so now it's down to about 328,000 acre feet, which is you know, about a third full," said Caywood.
Watching other farmers in the Valley forced to sell their properties, Caywood says she's aware of the stakes of farming in 2024.
"We're trying to hang in there and not sell out," said Caywood.
A canal less than a half mile south from the Caywood farm in Casa Grande is supposed to hold water in it most months of the year, Caywood says, but it's currently bone dry.
Caywood tells ABC15 that's how it's expected to look for the next seven weeks.
Without water infrastructure funding, some rural communities are losing their water to the land itself. Without concrete-lined canals – and only half of the canals in the Caywood's region are lined – about two-thirds of the water is being lost before it gets to them.
"About a third of it is going down [into the dirt] and about a third of it up in the air," Caywood said.
Hobbs is certainly aware of the challenges facing Arizonans when it comes to water, even mentioning it 33 times during her State of the State address last week.
"Thanks to the careful planning and bipartisanship of generations of leaders before us, Arizona is a leader in water conservation and innovation. Our state uses less water today than in the mid-1950s, even as our population has boomed," Hobbs said during her speech.
"However, just because we have been successful in the past does not mean we can relax about the future. We can reject the doomsayers, but we must always have open and honest conversations about our water resources – not shy away because they can be difficult," she added.
This year, Hobbs is promising $33 million toward the state's Long-Term Water Augmentation Fund, but it was only 10% of what WIFA was expecting for the year.
"Money is not unlimited. And we're learning that very quickly in this fiscal year," said Chelsea McGuire, assistant director of external affairs for WIFA.
Arizona is expected to see a budget shortfall of $1.7 billion, according to analysts at the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the group that is tasked with monitoring Arizona's revenues and expenditures.
Hobbs' proposal isn't the end of the road, or the canal in this case. She will still be negotiating with the legislature on a final budget, and McGuire says WIFA has had productive conversations with both sides of the aisle when it comes to finding more investments in water.
"We want to make sure that we're growing the pie of water so that we're not always figuring out how we divvy out the slices, but we're actually making more, we're actually bringing an additional supply into the state," McGuire added.
For now, however, farmers like the Caywoods are looking to the heavens for help.
"We just have to hope these storms come in," said Caywood.
