Groundwater Wars

How We Survive

Marketplace

Business, News

5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kingman, Arizona, a small farming town in the desert, is a cautionary tale in the West’s water crisis.

About a decade ago, large corporate farms started moving into the desert of Mohave County, growing thirsty crops like alfalfa and nuts. At the time, there were practically no rules restricting groundwater pumping, and local officials worried the farms would run the town dry. So local leaders did something that hadn’t been done in 40 years. They asked the state to step in and pass strict rules on groundwater pumping.

This episode, we travel to Kingman to look at a complicated solution that has splintered a community, pitting neighbors against each other and farmers and ranchers against elected officials.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kingman, Arizona has an old school vibe.
0:03.4	The city of around 35,000 is in northwestern Arizona,
0:08.0	about an hour's drive from the Nevada border.
0:10.8	Route 66 runs through the heart of downtown.
0:14.3	Get your kicks on Route 66.
0:19.3	Retro neon signs advertise motels and diners and an annual classic car festival draws people
0:26.0	from all over.
0:27.0	Don't forget when on a kingman, Boston, San Bernardino, won't you?
0:33.2	They come, you know, to Kingman to C route 66.
0:36.7	It's a straight shot from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon.
0:40.6	Jamie Staley grew up in Kingman. She's serving her second term on the city council
0:46.3	while running a landscaping business with her husband. She's petite with long brown hair,
0:51.5	a former cheerleader who was also on the student council back in high school.
0:56.2	It was a really great little small town when I was a kid. A lot of people had lived here forever, you know, so I can remember going
1:06.6	to the grocery store with my mom and it would take forever to get out of there because she
1:11.0	knew everybody and we had to stop and talk.
1:14.0	Today, Jamie is raising two daughters of her own.
1:17.0	That's one of the reasons why I ran for city council.
1:20.0	I wanted to help work on issues that would create a town where my daughters could go to
1:26.8	college and there was a lot of opportunity for them to come back.
1:31.3	A lot of rural cities are seeing our young people move away and
1:35.2	they're not coming back because there aren't the jobs here. We want to see
	...

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