From harvesting timber in national forests to grazing cattle on the open range, our nation has faced many tragedies of the commons over the years. Whether hunting big game in the wild or extracting oil and gas from underground reservoirs, each example presented our leaders with the same, fundamental issue: if nobody owns it, everyone will overuse it.
For rural Arizona, groundwater is no different. As explained in Part 2, Arizona’s groundwater challenges are a tragedy of the commons, stemming from the fact that groundwater is a finite resource with multiple landowners on the surface, any one of whom can tap into the common supply.
How we approach this tragedy moving forward will determine not only the health of the aquifers but also the future of our rural communities. While some proposals have been offered to date, none have been sufficient to earn legislative support, and most have been wrong for our state.
To get it right, we must consider the approaches that have been taken in other contexts to see which have worked and which have not, allowing us to determine which could be the best fit for groundwater.
The socialist approach views self-interest as the problem. It seeks to control human behavior through mandates, permits, and fees. Whether renewable energy standards for climate, catch limits for fisheries, or sustained yield mandates for national forests, all prioritize resource preservation through government control—maintaining communal ownership and regulating beneficial use through bureaucrats who decide who can use what, when, and how much.
The property-based approach, on the other hand, views communal ownership as the problem. It seeks to eliminate the tragedy by establishing private property rights to the resource, allocating individual shares and allowing users to manage and conserve their own supplies, limited only by the fundamental principles of private property rights, such as the “no harm” principle and “right to exclude.”
Mining claims have operated on “first in time, first in right,” and grazing allotments grant exclusive rights to leaseholders, thereby reducing conflicts among users and making individuals responsible for their own supplies.
To address rural groundwater, Arizona leaders must decide which of these approaches they will take.
Socialist options don’t work
Quod nullius est, est domini regis. It means: “What is the property of no one, belongs to the king.”
In 1976, after the Arizona Supreme Court declared groundwater a public resource, the Court said: “The legislature has the authority to determine which groundwater uses are most important to the general welfare and to allocate the state’s groundwater resources accordingly.”
This statement illustrates the truth about communal ownership: if no one owns the resource, then the government has absolute authority to act as king over its use. This is why the Arizona Department of Water Resources frequently reminds landowners that their right to use water is only “usufruct” to the land they own: meaning they don’t own the groundwater itself, the state does.
Like wild animals in Old England, communal resources belonged to the Crown—hunters could only hunt when, where, and how the king said they could. Those systems, like today’s socialist groundwater regimes, treat resources as communal property controlled by government fiat.
Such approaches typically fail because they lead to higher scarcity, higher prices, and worse outcomes for the resource itself. The federal government’s centralized control over national forests, for example, has produced catastrophic wildfires, endangered protected species, and restricted affordable timber.
In Arizona, the infamous “management area” is the hallmark socialist approach to groundwater— including 1948 “Critical Management Areas” and 1980 “Active Management Areas.”
According to Dean E. Peterson and Larry L. Deason in Arizona’s Groundwater Problem & Proposed Legislation, the 1948 Critical Management Areas “did not adopt any of the basic principles of water law,” but rather were an “exercise of the general police power of the state” through centralized restrictions.
In 1980, Arizona doubled down on its socialist approach with the Groundwater Management Act, establishing “Active Management Areas” that centralized control into the Arizona Department of Water Resources. This gave the agency near-absolute power over groundwater in AMAs, allowing its director to effectively act as king over the common supply.
In both cases, users rushed to drill before grandfathering deadlines, and corporate and municipal users entrenched their historical pumping, distorting market incentives. After 40 years, the 1980 Act has failed to achieve “safe yield” in most AMAs.
Despite their clear failures, proponents today continue to argue that Arizona should “finish what was started” with the 1948 and 1980 groundwater acts by expanding socialist-style control statewide through “Rural Groundwater Management Areas” and “Local Groundwater Stewardship Areas.”
These proposals must be rejected, as they would only impose new bureaucracies, tax personal groundwater withdrawals, and mandate volumetric reductions while maintaining the same communal ownership model that led to the tragedy in the first place.
Property-based solutions are best
Meum et tuum. It means: “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.”
According to John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, the role of government is not to seek to control human behavior, but rather to protect private property by using the limited power of government to quantify and secure individual rights, prevent takings, support transferability, and uphold the “no harm” principle and biblical golden rule between and among property owners.
Rather than mandating conservation through coercion, property-based systems embrace human nature and seek to harness the power of self-interest to guide the invisible hand toward voluntary conservation.
History has proven that this approach works. When socialist mandates in American fisheries led to overfishing, policymakers switched to property-based catch shares and individual transferable quotas, which restored fish populations.
When hunters arrived in the New World, they rejected the Old English system and adopted the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which includes transferable hunting permits, helping to maintain healthy wildlife populations while providing a fair system of access.
Even “adopt a highway” programs harness self-interest to address trash and litter on public highways, granting exclusive naming and advertising rights to private parties in exchange for maintenance.
Overall, individual ownership protects scarce resources better than bureaucratic control because direct ownership creases individual responsibility. Where individuals are given ownership and responsibility, conservation increases because what belongs to someone is protected by someone.
Arizona needs correlative rights
To solve Arizona’s groundwater tragedy, we must remove it from communal ownership and apply a property-based approach. One solution designed specifically for finite underground resources like groundwater is “correlative rights.”
Derived from oil and gas law in resource-rich states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, correlative rights allocate proportional shares of the resource to adjoining landowners on the surface, based on the amount of land they own. If a person owns five percent of the surface, then they own five percent of the oil and gas below, plain and simple. This is consistent with the ad coelum doctrine described in Part 1.
In many of these resource-rich states, policymakers have already adopted correlative rights for groundwater. In Texas, for example, the Edwards Aquifer Authority uses correlative rights to allocate groundwater. In Nebraska, natural resource districts administer correlative rights.
Because allocations are treated as real property, users are free to trade their shares among themselves within the same basin—allowing market forces, rather than government bureaucracy, to dictate the most efficient use of limited resources.
This is why correlative rights have been such an effective way to prevent the tragedy of the commons in finite underground resources to date. As a proven, property-based framework rooted in America’s traditional values, correlative rights are the right approach for Arizona.
It’s time to restore private property rights to groundwater
When the Arizona Supreme Court enshrined “communal ownership” into law, it likened groundwater to a wild animal, saying it was “free to roam as [it] please[d]” and the “property of no one” until “captured.”
In so doing, it wrongfully embraced the Old English model that Americans rejected and failed to follow the American path that utilizes private property rights to advance the public good. This must be undone.
To address the tragedy of the commons in Arizona, we must recognize the harms of communal ownership and reject the socialist schemes that seek to maintain it. Only by restoring private property rights to groundwater through the adoption of correlative rights can Arizona finally address the tragedy and allow landowners to protect and conserve the supplies beneath their feet.
It’s time that Arizona leaders consider a new approach to groundwater supplies. As Arizona Justice Duke Cameron wrote in 1976: “The time has come to consider again the doctrine of correlative rights.”
Suppose you were an evil genius who decided to create a permanent underclass out of a particular race. What provisions would you make to ensure that they remained permanently poor and outcast?
Here are some ideas. First, physically separate them from the rest of the population. Give them room to live, but make sure the land is not owned by individuals who could grow their net worth, but by the collective, each tribe with its own sovereign government within the national government.
Encourage economic dependency by supplying them with lots of free stuff, some available only to them. Create a bureaucracy to manage the financial affairs of only this particular race. Grant them special privileges exclusive to their race, such as the right to operate certain businesses, but again on the condition that the ownership is by the collective.
Finally, emphasize the history of oppression this selected race has experienced and how the guilty oppressors owe them these “favors” in perpetuity.
If you’ve deduced that this roughly describes the treatment whites accorded to American Indians, that’s because it does. We all know the story of how this came about. When Europeans settled the New World, the clash of civilizations often wasn’t pretty.
Yes, there were atrocities on both sides, and it probably was historically inevitable that the more technically advanced culture would prevail. Nevertheless, our treatment of the indigenous populations can never be totally defended.
In a better world, when the fighting finally ended, we would have worked out a shared arrangement where both sides would have enjoyed equal citizenship rights and responsibilities. We would all have had the right to participate in the religious and social structures of our choosing with no special legal status belonging to any group.
In short, we could all be Americans, a blessing sought after around the world.
That’s not what happened of course. Instead, in the words of an 1881 Supreme Court ruling, the tribes were fashioned into separate “domestic independent nations” with a relationship like “that of a ward to his guardian.” The federal government began management of the land use and title management for millions of acres in Indian country.
Moreover, the government to a large extent assumed responsibility for the care and upkeep of Indians, including everything from schools and medical care to infrastructure projects and routine maintenance on reservations.
The result in hindsight was predictable. American Indians, no surprise, did not become the first group ever to achieve prosperity through welfare benefits. Instead, of all the racial minority groups in America, they today have the lowest average income, despite, or maybe because of, receiving the most economic aid from government.
In fact, of all our ethnic groups, the less access historically to entitlements they have received, the more wealthy they have become.
Also unsurprisingly, the federal government has done a notoriously terrible job of overseeing Indian economic affairs. For example, 66 million acres of land are held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), presumably to be managed for the Indians’ benefit. Yet the lands have produced minimal profits for the tribes.
The reservation lands contain abundant uranium, coal, and gas reserves. Still, Senate hearings concluded that only two million of the 15 million acres of energy reserves have been developed, leaving $1.5 trillion in underground resources untapped.
BIA rules or “white tape” often result in stricter regulations for tribes than for others. The result is that up to 49 steps can be required to obtain an oil lease in Indian country that requires four elsewhere. Excessive regulation also explains why valuable farmland is often left unused.
Before the European conquest, American Indians operated self-governing states in which they were “strong, self-sufficient, self-initiating, independent powerful individuals,” according to an historian of the period. Now they’re trapped in a no-man’s land between citizenship and status as wards of the state. Worse, after living under these conditions, many Indians themselves have now developed the habits of chronic dependency.
Some sympathetic observers call for more effective supervision of Indian affairs. But bureaucracies are notoriously resistant to reform. Let’s work instead to achieve for our countrymen full status as free Americans.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Democratic Candidate for Congressional District 1 Amish Shah was revealed to have attacked former President Ronald Reagan and the entire system of capitalism in a recently uncovered video from 2018.
In the video footage, Shah is heard to say, “What we’ve got is an economic system here that isn’t fair. People have started to realize this finally after years. What happened with Ronald Reagan starting to cut taxes on the very, very wealthy has now given us the society we have, and this is what the real travesty is.”
In full, Shah offered a distinctly socialist rebuke of Reagan-era conservative reforms, tax cuts that objectively revived the U.S. economy after the disastrous Carter Administration.
“We’re institutionalizing inequality this… this is what we’re doing. Um, what… what we’ve got is an economic system here that isn’t fair,” Shah said.
He then began to outline a socialist solution:
“And, and, and this is what the real travesty is: lack of good healthcare for example. Um… an expensive healthcare strips people of assets. Not having affordable education then takes those people and puts them at, those kids, and puts them at a massive disadvantage. And there you go.
What you’re going to get is people without opportunity and then finding themselves in a place where they can’t make ends meet. And we’re funding a school to prison pipeline and …and that’s, that’s not right. That’s, that’s just morally, uh, objectionable way for a society to run.
And so I’m… I’m happy that what we’re seeing within the democratic party is a… a huge progressive movement that’s coming up and saying this is wrong and we’re going to do something about it.”
Shah’s views do not appear to have changed. In a recent debate featuring Shah, he explained his class warfare argument and even vowed to raise taxes on Arizonans. “I’m not in favor of extending the Trump tax cuts because a lot of the folks that were helped by those were wealthy,” said Shah.
NRCC Spokesperson Ben Petersen criticized Shah heavily in a statement, “Amish Shah’s extreme vow to axe the Trump tax cuts represents a declaration of war on Arizonans’ livelihoods. Shah’s class warfare campaign and support for socialism are disqualifying in the first district.”
As previously reported by the New York Post, Shah’s heavily radicalized socialist background has caused significant controversy in recent weeks as ties to Senator Bernie Sanders found him endorsing single-payer socialized medicine.
He recently ran afoul of the City of Tempe for use of mailers depicting a retired Tempe Police officer in full uniform in violation of A.R.S. 9-500.14, which forbids the use of city resources to influence an election.
And further reporting from the Washington Free Beacon also uncovered his rental of a modest condominium in his district and listing of that address for voter registration purposes, instead of his primary residence located in the neighboring third district, in possible violation of Arizona law.
Recently, Tim Walz said the quiet part out loud, declaring, “We can’t afford four more years of this.” When Walz and JD Vance face off on the debate stage this week, this is one statement they will both agree on: Americans can’t afford four more years of the Biden-Harris agenda transformed to a Harris-Walz Administration.
As we and others around us grapple with skyrocketing inflation, depleting savings accounts, soaring interest rates, and wages unable to keep pace with the financial ruins from the Biden-Harris agenda, Tim Walz is right – Americans cannot afford four more years of Democrat failed policies. We’ve heard time and time again that Kamala is from a middle-class family. However, Harris continues to be oblivious to the consequences of her failed economic policies that impact our families at the grocery store, gas stations, and electricity bills. It seems she’s the only self-identified ‘middle-class’ person who is immune to the inflation crisis that she and President Joe Biden have created.
Here are the inconvenient facts for Harris and Walz. Inflation has cost the average Arizona household nearly $27,000. Everything from energy to food has dramatically increased in price. Our electric bills are up 30%, and gas prices are up 46%. Putting food on the table is increasingly expensive as grocery prices have spiked 21% since President Donald J. Trump left office. Under Biden-Harris, nothing in our lives is immune to inflation, which is a hidden tax on every American. And for growing families, everyday baby essentials have skyrocketed, with a pack of diapers increased by 32% and baby food up by nearly 12%.
While men and women are paying more for just about everything, we are also taking home less after inflation. Families around the nation have had to take out additional lines of credit just to make ends meet. Now, nearly four years into the Biden-Harris failed economy, those credit cards are maxed out, with debt reaching a record high of $1.14 trillion. Thanks to Kamalanomics, one in five Americans’ credit cards are maxed out.
Arizonans are at their breaking point, and the 2024 Democrat ticket will only make these economic crises worse. A Harris-Walz agenda is a page out of the socialist playbook. Between their costly Soviet-style price controls and a tax on small businesses that is higher than the tax rate in China, the Democrats’ agenda puts America last.
Don’t take my word for it; it was Tim Walz himself who once said, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” He also told business leaders, “We’re not taxing people–we’re taxing businesses.” Walz clearly doesn’t understand basic economics. When you tax a business, they pass that cost onto consumers.
These price controls and record-high tax rates will decimate what’s left of the American economy. But it’s not just our pocketbooks that are at risk. Walz, like Kamala, is a far-left radical socialist.
Together, they are the most liberal presidential ticket inhistory.
Tim Walz has a long record as Minnesota Governor that shows us how he would assist Kamala Harris in their shared mission of destroying our country. At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, Tim Walz will help usher in his Electric Vehicle mandate nationwide, requiring Americans to drive unaffordable electric cars that cost on average $56,575, which is over the average yearly salary in Arizona.
Tim Walz has a history of implementing unconstitutional mandates and socialist policies. Walz mandated lockdown long after Covid-19 ended, keeping children out of schools, and promoting the vaccine for children as young as six years old. During the lockdowns, Tim Walz even created a hotline to snitch on people who defied his ‘stay at home order,’ an authoritarian move that took officers from fighting crime to making criminals out of church services, and business owners who did not strictly follow masking rules – a power trip that turned Minnesota into North Korea.
Walz is no less radical on immigration and border security. As Governor, he signed legislation to provide free taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants, and he celebrated issuing driver’s licenses and car registrations to over 81,000 illegal immigrants in his state. Going even further, Walz granted illegals access to free college tuition. It’s clear that he puts illegals above American citizens. In response to President Trump’s border wall, Tim Walz said he would invest in ladders so that unvetted illegal migrants could still come over. It’s hard to believe that this current crisis at the border could get much worse, but it definitely would under the Harris-Walz Administration!
Additionally, Walz and Harris’ radical defund-the-police ticket should concern every community in Arizona and around the country. Just a handful of years ago, Walz essentially stood by while his own cities burned down and businesses were looted and violently destroyed, and then Kamala Harris helped raise money to bail the criminals out of jail. They make quite a team in these and many more areas. Americans be warned: this is what would be heading to our Arizona cities if this weak, failed, and dangerously liberal ticket has its way.
Americans can’t afford to send the most radical socialist ticket in U.S. history to the White House. With days left until election day, we must vote for a strong economy, safety in our communities, and a secure border. To do that, we must send tested and proven leaders to the White House—Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance. Let’s make the right decision for the future of our great nation!
Congresswoman Debbie Lesko represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. She is currently running for Maricopa County Supervisor in District 4.
A radical Democrat state representative is attempting to return to her middle-of-the-road legislative district for a new term in office.
State Representative Lorena Austin is running for reelection in Arizona Legislative District 9, which covers the city of Mesa. According to the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the district is likely one of the most competitive in the state, with a 2.6% vote spread in the Commission’s nine focus elections. Democrats are slightly favored in the district, having won in five of those nine focus elections.
Despite her district being more moderate in its political makeup, Austin has demonstrated a propensity to become one of the most extreme leftist members of the Arizona Legislature on almost every issue.
In a struggling state and national economy, where many families are struggling to get by in life, keep their jobs, and save for their children’s futures, Austin showed no mercy with her votes. This year, she was one of a handful of members to vote against HCR 2002, which stated that the legislature recognizes, encourages, and continues to support Arizona’s beef producing farmers, ranchers, and families. Last year (2023), she voted no on SB 1131, which would have prohibited a county, city, or town from levying a tax on rental property.
Austin is also opposed to individual property rights, as her votes have indicated. In 2023, she was one of 14 members to vote against final passage of a bill prohibiting protestors from targeting people in their own homes by protesting on their residential property (SB 1023).
This latest legislative session (2024), Austin voted no on SB 1129, which would have allowed a property owner or the owners’ agent to request from law enforcement the immediate removal of a person who is unlawfully occupying a residential dwelling. She also opposed SB 1073, which would have established a new form of the existing offense of obstructing a highway or other public thoroughfare and classified this new form of the offense as a class 6 felony (which was introduced in response to protestors blocking traffic).
Austin’s legislative record extends, too, into bouts of radical socialism. In 2023, she co-sponsored HB 2610, which would have created a state-owned bank. Additionally, she co-sponsored HB 2653, which would have established that “restaurants and other food service establishments in this state may only serve water and disposable straws to customers on request.” Earlier this year, Austin voted no on HB 2629, which would have established November 7 of each year as Victims of Communism Day and required the State Board of Education to create a list of recommended resources for mandatory instruction on the topic in certain public school courses.
The Democrat lawmaker has refused to support solutions to help her state end the border crisis affecting almost every community in Arizona – not to mention elsewhere in the nation. In 2023, Austin co-sponsored HB 2604, which would have permitted the Arizona Department of Transportation to issue a driver’s license or nonoperating ID to a person without legal status in the United States. And in this most recent legislative session, she voted no on HB 2621, which would have deemed that the trafficking of fentanyl across Arizona’s border is a public health crisis and directed the Arizona Department of Health Services to do everything within its power to address the crisis. She also opposed SCR 1042, which proclaimed the legislature’s support for the people and government of the state of Texas in its efforts to secure our nation’s southern border.
Austin has an awful record in office on crimes against children. In 2023, she voted against SB 1028, which would have prohibited a person or business from engaging in an adult cabaret performance on public property or in a location where the performance could be viewed by a minor. She also voted no on SB 1583, which would have mandated that a level one sex offender who commits specified sexual offenses is required to register on the internet sex offender website if the offender was sentenced for a dangerous crime against children.
This most recent legislative session (2024), Austin continued her spree of opposing legislation that would have protected more Arizona children from horrific crimes committed against them. She voted no on SB 1236, which would have specified that any offender who was convicted of or adjudicated guilty except insane for sexual crimes against children, whether completed or preparatory, and was 18 years of age or older at the time of the offense, must be included on the internet sex offender website. She also opposed HB 2835, which would have established knowingly observing a nude minor for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct for a person’s sexual gratification as a form of criminal sexual exploitation of a minor. And Austin voted no on a ballot referral (SCR 1021), which would statutorily require an adult who is convicted of a class 2 felony for any child sex trafficking offense to be sentenced to natural life imprisonment.
As with many of her fellow Democrats running for the state legislature, Austin promotes endorsements from left-leaning organizations for her campaign for the Arizona House of Representatives, including Moms Demand Action, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, Save Our Schools Arizona, Progressive Turnout Project, HRC in Arizona, AEA Fund for Public Education, NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona, Stonewall Democrats of Arizona, Arizona Education Association, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Emily’s List, and Human Rights Campaign PAC.
There is one endorsement for Austin that appears to be absent from her website, from the Jane Fonda Climate PAC. Austin’s support from this PAC may be one of the most concerning for voters researching her record and determining which direction they want to see for their district. This PAC asserts that “major solutions are stopped cold: the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, clean energy investments, ending billions in tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry – all because of politicians backed by Big Oil.”
The Green New Deal pushed by the Jane Fonda Climate PAC is the same championed by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is one of the most progressive lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The district is currently represented by two Democrats in the state House of Representatives. Austin and her fellow Democrat incumbent, Seth Blattman, ran unopposed in the recent primary election. Austin received 10,353 votes, and Blattman obtained 8,741 votes. They will face off against Republicans Mary Ann Mendoza and Kylie Barber, who also ran unopposed in the primary election. Mendoza garnered 10,429 votes, and Barber received 10,136 votes.
November’s General Election will be the second time that Mendoza has been pitted against Austin and Blattman. In 2022, Austin and Blattman defeated Mendoza and her running mate, Kathy Pearce, to assume their offices for the 2023 Arizona legislative session.
Correction: A previous version of this article listed the incorrect vote totals for the candidates. The totals have now been updated with the latest results from the Arizona Secretary of State website.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
