Water PAC pushes for special election to designate McMullen Valley as AMA

McMullen Valley residents in rural western Arizona are working to hold a special election to designate the basin as an Active Management Area.

AMAs regulate groundwater pumping when supplies are scarce.

Residents have created the McMullen Valley Water Defenders PAC to gather signatures for a potential special election on March 9, 2027.

“We are actually, in my opinion, in the middle of the water wars in the Western United States,” Gary Saiter, chair of the McMullen Valley Water Defenders PAC, told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

The PAC will have to gather 10% of registered voters’ signatures in McMullen Valley to trigger the special election.

Saiter said they have a goal of 200 signatures, which should put them well above that threshold.

Only residents in McMullen Valley, including those in Salome, Wenden, Harcuvar and Aguila, can submit their signatures and participate in the election.

Condition of the McMullen Valley aquifer

A December 2023 Arizona Department of Water Resources report on supply and demand in the McMullen Valley aquifer found a deficit.

“They estimated that the aquifer was 50% depleted. They indicated that for every five acre-feet of water that is taken out, only one acre-foot of water is replenished,” Saiter said.

Then, in 2024, a New York-based investment firm known as Water Asset Management bought nearly 13,000 acres of farmland in McMullen Valley, giving WAM the rights to all the groundwater under the land.

However, WAM is unable to sell the groundwater to Valley customers until the Legislature passes a new law converting it to a transfer basin, which almost happened this past legislative session.

Saiter advocated strongly against House Bill 2758 earlier this year, which would have allowed WAM to transfer up to 33,000 acre-feet of water out of the basin a year and sell it.

The measure never made it out of the state Senate.

Now residents are concerned WAM will be back next session to try to pass the measure again.

“That, added to what people use here, plus agriculture actually exceeds the amount of water we have used in the past before WAM got involved,” Saiter said.

An AMA won’t stop WAM from trying to sell the water, but Saiter noted it will slow them down significantly.

If the special election is successful, he hopes a local AMA committee could provide input on the volume of water withdrawn from the aquifer and how those withdrawals occur.

“I fail to understand why a family in Buckeye who wants to build a home there is more important than I am,” Saiter said. “I want to have a home here, I want to have a community, I want to have a development. Why are they more important than me?”

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