Lawmaker Accuses Hobbs Of Using Water Funds For Political Subsidies and Government Surveillance

hobbs
Governor Katie Hobbs

An Arizona state lawmaker is accusing Governor Katie Hobbs of planning to spend federal money, that is supposed to be helping “Arizona water security,’ on gimmicks and payoffs.
The Governor has already spent nearly $360 million over budget, and concerns are growing about her administration’s grip on the state’s financial situation.

Representative Lupe Diaz is not just trying to express concerns, he says he is “sounding the alarm.” Diaz claims that Hobbs’ latest budget proposal has “misplaced priorities when it comes to securing Arizona’s water future.”

Hobbs is proposing to use over $60 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars to spend on a variety of projects.

Diaz, Chairman of the House Land, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs Committee, and Member of the House Appropriations Committee, says that the Hobbs plan is “nothing more than a political scheme designed to subsidize the cost of her bad water policies and increase bureaucratic control over the state’s critical groundwater resources.”

Diaz pointed to Hobbs’ proposal to spend $3.45 million for satellite-based surveillance of Arizonans’ water usage rather than for recharge projects that put more water in the ground, “as one of the most alarming.”

According to Diaz, this funding goes toward “monitoring technology” that will track personal groundwater consumption from space. Diaz is concerned that this tracking will give “radical environmentalists and bureaucrats unprecedented access to private well data.”

“For years, Democrats and their out-of-state activist allies have pushed for government metering and monitoring of private wells to open the door for future taxation of private groundwater use,” said Chairman Diaz. “Republicans have fought back against this vast government overreach at every turn. Now, Hobbs wants to circumvent the will of the people and spy on rural Arizonans from space instead of working with the legislature to pass laws that rural communities can support.

“This invasive and widespread surveillance of the Arizona people is an attack on personal privacy and poses a direct threat to Arizona businesses that rely on groundwater for private industry. Such monitoring could expose competitively sensitive trade information about how businesses use and conserve water to produce valuable economic commodities, opening them up to attacks from activist groups and government overreach.”

The Governor’s proposal also includes a $12 million payout to the City of Buckeye to subsidize the cost of a new 25% groundwater tax the city will be subject to, according to Diaz, under the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR)’s “illegal Alternative Designation of 100-year Assured Water Supply (ADAWS) Rule.” The City of Buckeye had previously stated that the tax “places a substantial financial burden on the city” and was not supported by any “study or justification.”

“In 2023, the Governor shut down economic development in one of the fastest-growing and most affordable housing markets in the nation – Buckeye,” Diaz said. “The way the Governor has treated the City of Buckeye since she took office in 2023 has been unfair in comparison to other cities and unsubstantiated by credible groundwater data.”

Diaz argues that Hobbs’ $12 million payout to the city does nothing to address the underlying policy decisions that put Buckeye in this situation in the first place, and that she should roll back the illegal 25% groundwater tax her state agency adopted, or lift the illegal housing moratorium she unilaterally imposed on the fast growing and critical part of the state.

Diaz accuses the Governor of having an agenda and said that “She created the problem, and now she’s throwing money at it to move that agenda.”

In the alternative, Diaz proposes directing the state’s limited funds toward “effective water conservation measures,” proposing on farm irrigation efficiency, market-based agricultural conversion, recharge, reuse, new technologies, and developing the 331 sites that ADWR and the State Land Department identified in 2021 as suitable for stormwater recharge projects that increase local water supplies.

According to Diaz, Hobbs’ Department of Water Resources has spent years claiming Arizona’s groundwater basins are in a perilous condition, even asserting that certain basins are “Priority Basins” that need immediate control. Now, after threatening the designation of Active Management Areas (AMAs) throughout the state and shutting down homebuilding in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Hobbs is saying she doesn’t have the information she needs to make critical policy decisions.

“If funding to study groundwater is needed now, then why did the Governor impose and threaten to impose regulatory restrictions on Arizonan communities before she had the facts,” Chairman Diaz asked. “The Governor’s allocation of these dollars to gathering additional information proves that she never had sufficient information to shut down Arizona’s critical homebuilding and agricultural industries in the first place. What we need is actual, peer reviewed science before making critical decisions.”

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13 Comments

  1. The problem is fundamental; if your an incompetent Governor, then you don’t know how to do govt things. (Ms. Hobbs will you please take a bow?)
    You must look at where water loss takes place, and mitigate those losses.
    The CAP aqua duct runs 336 miles and brings water from the Colorado River to the Valley. The annual loss do to evaporation is approximately; 12,097,209,600 gallons.
    To come to this conclusion, I estimated, 1 mile at 60′ wide x 336 miles distance and 1/2″ of depth per day loss to evaporation:
    23,016 per min
    1,380,960 per hour
    33,143,040 per day
    12,097,209,600 per year
    Rather than further tax the people and cities, you should pull your thumb out of your, dam, and put infrastructure in place, to control that loss. It’s like a gift that keeps on giving.
    This was a part of my platform, in my bid for the Governor’s chair in 2014. Conveniently terminated by political law fare, that would make President Trump say: “DAAAMN!” (I can’t hate)
    Ms. Hobbs, will you please remove yourself to the curb?

    • Perhaps you should take another run at the job. Hobbs won’t get away with hiding in her basement and fixing the election this time.

  2. How long are we the people going to allow this criminal to be doing her crimes without any consequences?

  3. A Democrat who wants to fund a system to surveille the water usage of the citizens of her state? What a surprise! . Big Sister is watching!

    Why is it that the people (Democrats) who howled the loudest about the election being the only way to keep Fascists out of power are the ones committed to using Fascist methods to govern us?

  4. These weak Rs lost ground again. They have not addressed it early enough and have not made publicity. Now, she is simply claiming that overspending is a regular matter. Do not let her getaway with this! Stand up finally! Make a big deal about it! Go to the lame AZ press. Stand on the capitol steps and make announcements and accusations! Gather a crowd to protest! Use all the lefty tactics to expose this. And, yes, impeach if it amounts to that.

  5. When the Hard-Left manipulated the narrative of this slow-crisis “water problem” to one of “conservation and control” (yeah, vis-a-vis their Water Commissars). I wrote several op-eds warning of this….and its solution: a supply side one (as in MORE water).

    • Big Bill,

      Don’t forget, Arizona must take a backseat to CAP water due to Californias “need” caused by one huge goofball governor. Matter of fact, Arizona is last in line for CAP water as I recall, even to Mexico. Didn’t Arizona have a short war with California over Colorado water, we had our first militia, even a female Admiral leading the Colorado River gunboats?

      I say Bill Sellers for the next Arizona Admiral!

  6. The witch is a “Big Bother” communist who needs to be impeached for her reckless abuse of citizens money! Shut her down. How hard can it be? The lefties attacked President Trump for 8 years! C’mon people, stop the witch!

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