"Water - What's Right? What's Wrong"

Water – What’s Right? What’s Wrong?

Published in the Eastern Arizona Courier on August 8, 2018

By Richard Lunt

William Jennings Bryan once wrote:  “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

The Lunts, descendents of Henry Lunt, came to this Duncan valley in 1916.  They bought a 40 acre farm and split it between two brothers, Broughton and Heaton Lunt.  The valley was soon settled with farmers up and down the river.  

In 1920 the Federal Government decided to declare who had first priority to the water of the Gila River System.  Surveys were made on all the land that was being farmed.  The land under homes, barns, ponds, and canals was not included in the survey, only land that was actually being farmed.  It was rumored that the farmers were going to have to pay for the decreed land, so if there was a spot in the field that was full of Johnson grass, or was a storage spot for equipment, etc., these spots were not included in the survey.  This explains why there is un-decreed land in the middle of a field used today.  These surveys were done with chains and the survey equipment of the time.  This 1920 survey is now what makes up what we call “decreed” acres.  This determines what land a farmer gets to water. 

In 1935 the Globe Equity Decree used the survey from 1920 to limit the river water usage of farmers to 6 acre feet of water per acre annually for decreed land.  This 1935 law also allowed farmers to transfer the decreed water from one piece of property to another.  This transfer of decree is still allowed, but can only happen with an order from the court, which is very costly. We need to be able to transfer decreed land from one property to another without great cost to the farmer.  This way he could move the decree on his land to the parts of his fields that are the most farmable.

After 1935 it was discovered that 6 acre feet of water per acre was sometimes enough to sustain a crop and sometimes it wasn’t, depending upon whether there was water in the river, because there were few or no pumps.  So the farmers went to the state and received permits to drill wells to supplement the water they were getting from the river.  This allowed them to pump water on any farmable ground.  Because of World War II, the federal government needed more production from the farmers to support the war efforts.   The federal government came in financed, controlled and made contracts to drill wells to supplement the river water.  The water from these wells could also be used on any land whether it was decreed or not.  

Later in 1995, the courts decided that the 6 acre feet of water per acre annually included river water as well as pump water. This was a big setback for the farmers in the Duncan and Safford valleys.  The irrigation districts were monitored more closely and any over usage of water could result in huge penalties being assessed to the irrigation district or a loss of water rights could result if the law is not followed.  In the beginning, the Safford and Franklin Irrigation Districts had around 50,000 decreed acres, but now they are down to only around 28,000 decreed acres.  This is a huge loss of land and water. 

This water battle has been going on for almost 100 years.  It is a very complicated and difficult issue.  As a member of the Franklin Irrigation District board, Wilber Lunt fought this battle for 57 years.  He testified before a Joint House and Senate hearing in 1990 in defense of our water rights.  As the demand for water from the cities grows, we find ourselves in the court room with judges who have little or no understanding of the history or the issues.  There are enormous political pressures from the cities being applied.  As a small area, our water district and individual farmers cannot afford the huge cost of lawyers and litigation.  

What is right?  Farms that have been here for generations cease to exist, because their water rights are being taken away in order to allow the cities to grow.  We obtained our water legally with the laws that existed at the time.  Through litigation, legislation and regulation, our water rights are being endangered.  Today we grow more crops with less water and yet the government and the courts still want to take more of our water and make us unprofitable.  We need the state to step up and defend the well permits they issued, and the water rights that go with them.  Our ability to pass our farms and legacy to our posterity will cease to exist.  Are our rights secondary to the rights of those who live in the city?  

“Destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”