On March 7, 2024, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that Fondomonte, the Arizona arm of Saudi dairy giant Almarai, was "officially no longer pumping Arizona groundwater in Butler Valley."
The two words doing all the work are "Butler Valley."
About 20 miles away, in the Ranegras Plain basin around Vicksburg, Fondomonte kept growing alfalfa for Saudi cows. In 2023 alone it pulled about 31,196 acre-feet of groundwater out of that basin, the attorney general says, and Courthouse News reported the company accounts for more than 80 percent of the pumping there. Mayes put it in household terms: enough to support 93,000 Arizona households for an entire year. Two and a half years after the victory lap, those wells are still running, and the state's best legal shot at slowing them has no trial date anyone has made public.
What the state actually stopped
The Butler Valley action was real. On Oct. 2, 2023, the State Land Department terminated one Fondomonte lease for an uncured default dating to 2016 and declined to renew three others. By Feb. 15, 2024, inspectors confirmed irrigation had stopped on all 3,520 acres.
That was state trust land, and the minority of the operation. A February 2024 Auditor General report found Fondomonte held five state leases totaling 6,608 acres, not four. The fifth, 3,088 acres in the Ranegras Plain basin, was never part of the Butler Valley announcement. KJZZ reported at the time that it runs through 2031. The same audit found outdated appraisals had cost the state about $3.4 million in rent, and that the state charged nothing at all for the water.
Then there is the land Fondomonte simply owns. Almarai paid $47.5 million in 2014 for farmland near Vicksburg, and the company now holds more than 22,000 acres in La Paz County. On private land outside a regulated basin, Arizona law let an owner drill as deep as it liked with a permit. In September 2024, six months after the announcement, the state approved Fondomonte's 33rd permitted well: 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep, rated at 3,000 gallons a minute. A typical domestic well there pumps up to 35. Hobbs's answer at the time was candid: "We would need legislation to change that."
What the pumping did
The state put numbers on it. ADWR found annual withdrawals in the Ranegras Plain basin outpace natural recharge by roughly 900 percent; agricultural use has been estimated at nearly 40,000 acre-feet a year against recharge of about 2,000. One monitored well has dropped more than 240 feet since the 1980s. Satellites show the land sinking, and a state map shows the subsidence is most severe where Fondomonte farms, the Associated Press reported.
Kari Ann Noeltner, La Paz County's chief deputy assessor and a basin resident, told the AP she has started saving money in case she needs a deeper well.
The fix that grandfathers the problem
On Jan. 9, 2026, ADWR designated the Ranegras Plain basin Arizona's eighth Active Management Area. It does real things: no new irrigated acreage, no new large pumpers, mandatory metering.
It does not do the thing the headlines implied. Existing irrigators keep grandfathered rights for land watered in the past five years. The management plan has a two-year runway, and the long-range goal is to cut pumping in half over 50 years. Judge Scott Minder noted that grandfathered users typically must monitor and limit their use, not necessarily reduce it. Assistant Attorney General Clinten Garrett put the gap bluntly: "Fondomonte is single-handedly pumping more water from the Ranegras Plain Basin than all the other users combined." Without a court finding that the pumping is a nuisance, he argued, the company could claim a grandfathered right and keep pumping at its current rate.
The lawsuit, still waiting
Attorney General Kris Mayes sued on Dec. 11, 2024, calling the pumping a public nuisance and asking for an injunction and an abatement fund for the people harmed. It has survived every attempt to kill or freeze it. In April 2026 Hobbs vetoed HB2167, which would have let targets of nuisance suits sue the AG, writing that she "will not curtail a tool that is used to protect Arizonans from bad actors." In May, Minder refused Fondomonte's request to pause the case while ADWR works.
And yet. Minder ordered the two sides to build a schedule around ADWR's two-year process, and no trial date has been made public. The harm, the state says, is accelerating. The calendar is not.
Fondomonte's case
The company's strongest argument is that it has broken no law. Outside regulated basins, Arizona let anyone with land and a permit pump. Fondomonte called the AG's allegations "totally unfounded," says it complies with state regulations, and told the AP it will follow all the new rules and has invested in water efficiency. When Minder refused to pause the case, the company still called parts of the ruling "a significant victory for justice."
The Farm Bureau's Philip Bashaw made the fairness point: "Everyone is going to wind up with the same limitations." That is true, and it is also the point. A rule that treats the basin's biggest pumper like everyone else leaves it the basin's biggest pumper.
The questions
For Gov. Katie Hobbs: Does "no longer pumping" still describe Fondomonte? Will the administration act on the 3,088-acre Ranegras lease before 2031?
For Attorney General Kris Mayes: Has a trial date been set? Will the state formally oppose Fondomonte's grandfathered right?
For the Arizona State Land Department: What is the status of Fondomonte's Ranegras Plain lease, its rent and any water reporting? How was the Butler Valley termination appeal resolved?
For Fondomonte and Almarai: How many acre-feet did Fondomonte pump in 2024 and 2025? How many wells are active? Has it filed for a grandfathered right, and for how much?
Those are public numbers. None are on the record yet.
Built from public records and reporting through Oct. 20, 2026, including releases from the governor and attorney general, the Auditor General, KJZZ, AZPM, the Arizona Capitol Times, Courthouse News and the Associated Press. We could not obtain Fondomonte's 2024 or 2025 pumping figures, the court's scheduling order, or the current status of the Ranegras lease. We are looking for the scheduling order, the company's grandfathered-right filing, well-level records and residents whose wells have failed. The governor's office, the Attorney General's office, the Arizona State Land Department and Fondomonte/Almarai were asked for comment; responses will be added with a dated update. Tips: [email protected]. Corrections: [email protected].