By Alexander Kolodin |

In 1952, Republican Governor J. Howard Pyle appointed a 24-member Underground Water Commission to recommend a new groundwater framework for Arizona. Every member was a farmer or rancher— people who lived and worked on the land and relied on groundwater to survive.

After nine months of work and thirteen public comment sessions, the Commission issued a 172-page report recommending that the Legislature adopt “correlative rights” as the new groundwater law for the state, calling it the fairest and most equitable way to apportion subterranean rights among adjoining landowners on the surface.

Farmers agreed. One testified: “The principle of correlative rights gets closer to solving the problem than any water code.” Another said that courts should eventually recognize that landowners should own the groundwater beneath their land, so long as it does not harm others—like the ad coelum doctrine and “no harm” principle described in Part 1.

Yet, the Legislature failed to act. With Democrats holding 15 of 19 Senate seats and 50 of 80 House seats, lawmakers left the issue to the courts, which rejected correlative rights in favor of “beneficial use,” leaving landowners with no legal means to protect or conserve their supplies.

It didn’t have to be this way.

We can restore private property rights to groundwater

In 1953, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected correlative rights not because the Court thought it was unfair, but rather because the Court believed it was technologically infeasible, saying: “Apportionment of subterranean percolating water between adjacent landowners is often, if not always, impossible.”

Today, that excuse no longer applies. Advances in groundwater modelling have made quantifying and allocating rights to subsurface water completely possible—especially in Arizona’s alluvial fill basins like Willcox, McMullen Valley, and the Big Chino, where the tragedy of the commons is already unfolding.

In 2011, for example, the Arizona Water Resources Development Commission issued a statewide assessment, finding that the Willcox, McMullen, and Big Chino basins contained approximately 42 million, 14 million, and 10 million acre-feet (AF) of groundwater, respectively, to a depth of 1,200 feet, providing critical data that demonstrates that implementing correlative rights is entirely feasible.

Since it’s been over seventy years since we’ve meaningfully considered correlative rights, many residents today have likely never heard of this term and would naturally have questions about how it would work, how it would benefit them, and how it would help advance our shared goals of conservation.

Here’s how it would work—using Willcox as an example

Once a basin is closed to new pumping, the groundwater is quantified and allocated to landowners based on the number of acres they own. With 42 million AF underground and about 1.2 million acres on the surface, each landowner in Willcox would receive about 35 AF per acre as a one-time “lump sum.”

For a 4-acre parcel (the minimum lot size in Cochise County), a landowner would receive 140 AF. A 160-acre quarter section would receive 5,600 AF, and a full 640-acre section would get 22,400 AF. This is similar to the proportional share-based approach utilized in oil and gas regulation.

It is also similar to the approach utilized in Arizona’s transportation basins, like Harquahala, McMullen Valley, Butler Valley, and the Big Chino. In Harquahala, the formula is 6 AF/acre annually. More acres mean more rights.

For municipal providers, lump sums would be allocated based on the acres they serve. A larger service area means a larger groundwater allocation. When residents interconnect, their allocations would transfer to the provider—allowing the provider to manage their supplies on their behalf.

State trust lands would also receive allocations, which lessees would be entitled to use through their leases. The more acres leased, the more groundwater available. In transportation basins that have large amounts of state trust land, cities would know exactly how many acres they’d need to lease to secure an assured water supply.

Additionally, landowners would be credited a proportional share of the annual natural recharge. A person owning one percent of the acres would receive one percent of the natural recharge.

Over time, these credits would add up. After five years, a person earning 0.2 AF/year would acquire a full acre-foot, while a resident with 28 acres would earn enough water annually to meet all of their household needs from recharge alone, allowing them to live off their recharge without touching their lump sum.

For lump sums, a minimum 4-acre lot would provide enough water to last 424 years. Adding recharge makes supplies last even longer. Additionally, increased recharge from proactive investments would be credited to the investor, incentivizing the development of new recharge projects.

Because the basin is closed to new pumping, existing landowners would be protected against subsequent users, like prior appropriation but without the complications. Additionally, because rights are transferable within the same basin, economic growth is still possible. Newcomers can enter, but only if they purchase land or water rights from existing users first.

To enforce all this, annual reporting requirements would be implemented, ensuring that no one pumps more than his or her fair share. Meanwhile, minimum well spacing requirements would be implemented to help ensure an even distribution across the basin, reducing impacts to existing well-owners.

Well monitoring has been a controversial issue in the past, largely because it has been seen as the camel’s nose under the tent for greater bureaucratic control. Here, however, users get certificated private property rights that can never be revoked and thus more, not less, freedom in exchange for their trouble.

For residential well owners, shared infrastructure is already possible through the adoption of water districts. A shared well drilled to 1,200 feet can provide greater long-term security than 100 wells drilled to 120 feet—allowing each landowner to access their full supply but at a substantially reduced cost.

Lastly, there would be no “safe yield” requirement. While states like California have applied correlative rights to only annual recharge, this model would not work in Arizona. In fact, the 1952 Underground Water Commission specifically rejected the California model, noting it would not provide enough water in our arid climate.

Instead, a hybrid approach is required, one that allocates rights to both the subterranean resource and the annual recharge, thereby maximizing the amount of water granted to each landowner and ensuring that every drop is accurately accounted for. That is the approach described here.

Your water, your choice

The most intriguing aspect of correlative rights is that, once the groundwater has been allocated, it’s yours to keep—permanently. If you don’t use it, there’s no risk of loss; it will still be there 10, 20, or 100 years into the future.

This stands in stark contrast to the current free-for-all described in Part 2, where leaving groundwater in the basin simply leaves more for someone else to take. Because there’s no forfeiture, landowners are free to use, conserve, lease, or transfer their water within the same basin as they see fit. The choice is theirs.

For farmers, this creates new incentives. A 160-acre farm with a center pivot may have enough water to last several years, while others may need to scale back, shift to less water-intensive crops, or acquire additional rights from others. Commercial farming is still possible, but only if land and groundwater use align, encouraging open space and land conservation.

Thus, the motivation to conserve is simple: when the property is yours, you—and you alone—are responsible for maintaining it. Once an allocation is gone, it’s gone for good, forcing users to make tough decisions and encouraging wise use. That’s the power of private property: when you own it, you protect it.

Turning water into wealth

For many rural residents, correlative rights would instantly turn an uncertain water future into a secure financial asset, creating real value that can provide both long-term water security and financial independence.

With a single AF selling at roughly $400 today, a 40-acre parcel would suddenly hold $560,000 in water value—plus an additional recharge credit worth about $200 a year, acting like an annual dividend. For someone living on a fixed income, that’s transformative.

A 160-acre quarter section would receive $2,240,000 in water value, plus $800 in annual credits, while a 640-acre full section would sit on nearly $9 million and receive $3,000 in annual recharge credits.

With outright ownership, landowners could monetize their allocations or borrow against them without pumping a single drop. Here, water is not a commodity—it’s a currency: the currency of your future, allowing rural residents to build real equity and generational wealth.

The question is: what would you do with your share?

Correlative rights can save our aquifers, farmers, and ranchers—it’s time to adopt them

For over seventy years, Arizona tried top-down bureaucratic approaches to addressing the tragedy of the commons in groundwater—but to no avail. As discussed in Part 3, what Arizona needs now is the only solution that we haven’t tried but should have adopted when rural farmers and ranchers recommended it in 1952: correlative rights.

By closing our alluvial-fill basins to outsiders who seek to pump them dry for short-term profit at the expense of others, and restoring private property rights to the groundwater beneath our feet through correlative rights, we can unlock millions of dollars’ worth of groundwater that will last thousands of years and finally give landowners the legal right and incentive to protect and conserve their supplies for themselves and future generations.

The Legislature can act. As the Arizona Supreme Court itself said in 1953: “If any change in the law is necessary, it should be made by the Legislature,” including the power to “invest” groundwater with the “character” and “attributes” of “private ownership.”

The moment to act has arrived. Imminent cutbacks to our Colorado River supply mean that our state can no longer afford the inefficiency of centralized bureaucratic control over our most precious resource. It’s time to end top-down bureaucratic control, give private property rights to groundwater back to the people, and fix a generations-old mistake.

• Read Part 1 Of 4 – Arizonans Had Private Property Rights To Groundwater
• Read Part 2 Of 4 – Lack Of Private Property Rights Is Sucking Rural Arizona Dry
• Read Part 3 Of 4 – How To Solve The Tragedy Of The Commons In Our State

Alexander Kolodin serves Legislative District 3 in the Arizona State House and has been practicing election law in Arizona for over a decade. He is currently running to be Arizona’s next Secretary of State.