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State lobbying disclosures show that Galvin is a partner at Rose Law Group, which lobbied on behalf of a subsidiary of the Saudi corporation Almarai currently tapping U.S. groundwater in drought-stricken Arizona and California to grow alfalfa
“My law practice consists nearly entirely of practicing land use law, and I am also a registered lobbyist with the state along with several other attorneys at Rose Law Group.” Galvin wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Lobbying is not a major aspect of my legal career and takes up little of my time in comparison to my core practice area. Rose Law Group is a registered lobbyist for Fondomonte Arizona with the state of Arizona. I am one of several attorneys at Rose Law Group that are covered under that registration.”
✓ In response to his role on behalf of Fondomonte and its intersection with the board of supervisors, Galvin wrote, “their farming operation is located outside of the County I represent – in fact it is more than 100 miles from my district. In addition, counties in Arizona have limited powers related to water policy and are not even a water provider.
✓ Maricopa County does not lease state land and does not have control over water charges or policies enacted by state agencies. I will continue to recuse myself in any case where a client of my law firm has business before Maricopa County.”
Lobbyist for Saudi Alfalfa Company Desiccating Arizona Was Elected to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors
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"An official recently elected to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, where he holds sway over an ongoing water dispute, was also a lobbyist for a Saudi company looking to protect its extraction of precious groundwater. Thomas Galvin, elected in the midterms to the post he was first appointed to in 2021, lobbied on behalf of the Saudi-owned farming company, which is using Arizona’s most depleted natural resource for foreign exports.
State lobbying disclosures show that Galvin is a partner at Rose Law Group, which lobbied on behalf of a subsidiary of the Saudi corporation Almarai currently tapping U.S. groundwater in drought-stricken Arizona and California to grow alfalfa. The animal feed, which is grown in harsh desert environments, is shipped overseas to support livestock on Saudi dairy farms. In 2014, Almarai bought almost 10,000 acres of farmland in Vicksburg, Arizona, through its wholly owned subsidiary Fondomonte, spending nearly $50 million on the purchase.
✓ The near-nonexistent water regulations in La Paz County, where Vicksburg is located, mean that Fondomonte can pump vast amounts of water out of Arizona’s water table, which has declined by over 50 feet in the past two decades.
✓ Before joining the board of supervisors, Galvin appeared at the Arizona state legislature to lobby against H.B. 2520, a bill instructing the Arizona Department of Water Resources to monitor the wells and water levels in the Upper Colorado River water planning area. At the hearing, Galvin told Land, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee members, “I am not sure that this bill is right for this time right now. … I’m afraid that, if this bill passes, what we’ll be doing is singling out farms and large agricultural users. You might actually be forcing farms to release proprietary data.” The bill ultimately failed, but not before Galvin called residents concerned about foreign capital draining their aquifers racist.
“My law practice consists nearly entirely of practicing land use law, and I am also a registered lobbyist with the state along with several other attorneys at Rose Law Group.” Galvin wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Lobbying is not a major aspect of my legal career and takes up little of my time in comparison to my core practice area. Rose Law Group is a registered lobbyist for Fondomonte Arizona with the state of Arizona. I am one of several attorneys at Rose Law Group that are covered under that registration.”
In response to his role on behalf of Fondomonte and its intersection with the board of supervisors, Galvin wrote, “their farming operation is located outside of the County I represent – in fact it is more than 100 miles from my district. In addition, counties in Arizona have limited powers related to water policy and are not even a water provider. Maricopa County does not lease state land and does not have control over water charges or policies enacted by state agencies. I will continue to recuse myself in any case where a client of my law firm has business before Maricopa County.”
Water has become so scarce in Arizona and neighboring states that plans have been floated to pump water from the Mississippi River across the country to supply drought-stricken residents. Fondomonte in particular has become a flashpoint in statewide water politics, with the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Kris Mayes, calling for an investigation and possible sanction on the Saudi company’s water use.
Large-scale farming of hay and alfalfa located on the border of Arizona and Nevada, on March 10, 2021 in Needles. The desert valley has been farmed for hay and alfalfa using groundwater pulled from the Colorado River, with much of the hay exported to feed animals in countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Photo:George Rose/Getty Images
Four years after Galvin’s testimony, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors finds itself adjudicating an increasingly tense situation that pits residents, politicians, and transporters against each other over who has a right to water and how each interest group should pay for access. In December 2021, Galvin was appointed to the board of supervisors by the sitting board in a unanimous vote. In January of this year, Galvin found himself in the middle of the standoff, with politicians and residents on all sides of the water divide demanding action on a water redistricting plan that would affect the price paid by hundreds of Maricopa residents, some of whom rely on water hauled for miles and distributed into tanks below their drought-stricken homes.
After the federal Bureau of Reclamation declared a water shortage from the Colorado River last year, Scottsdale — where many Rio Verde Foothills residents draw their water from — declared that their own water supply would be off limits to the tenders who deliver water to individual resident tanks in Rio Verde. In light of the looming shut-off, citizens of Rio Verde attempted to garner Galvin’s support to designate a new water district that would allow pumping from Harquahala Valley.
While Galvin was fast to support unlimited pumping by Fondomonte before he was appointed to the board, Rio Verde residents found a less sympathetic ear once he was on it. Neither the residents who support the new water district nor the water haulers who oppose it were able to get Galvin to make a determination in the process for weeks.
As the January 1 water shut-off for Rio Verde residents rapidly approaches, Galvin and the rest of the Maricopa supervisors have failed to secure a resolution to the water crisis, in part due to the complex and overlapping matrix of regulatory authorities that govern Arizona’s water use. In August, Maricopa supervisors unanimously voted down a proposal to create a new water district. Galvin endorsed the idea of a privately held water utility, like the Canadian-owned Epcor, supplying the water, but some residents are opposed to the construction burden and the multiyear timeline that the plan would necessitate. In 2021, Rose Law helped facilitate Epcor’s purchase of Johnson Utilities on behalf of land owners and home builders in and around the San Tan Valley south of Phoenix.
Of the dozens of companies represented by Rose Law Group, many fall under the category of water-reliant industries including horse breeding, real estate development, mining, and fossil fuels. The firm also lists conservative political clients including Romney for President, Senator Marco Rubio for President of the United States, and Build America’s Fence.
Galvin’s election to the board follows increased scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s influence on American politics and a shifting consensus on a gulf state that was once one of America’s closest guarded energy allies. A month before the midterm elections, Saudi Arabia announced a massive cut in oil production that both politicians and policy experts described as a political attack on President Joe Biden’s agenda and Democrats’ electoral odds. After the Biden administration signaled its support for Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman receiving sovereign immunity in a lawsuit targeting the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, reports emerged that Saudi Arabia is considering increasing its oil production in the coming winter months." READ MORE
2016 RELATED CONTENT
Saudi Arabia buying up farmland in US Southwest
Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are scooping up farmland in drought-afflicted regions of the U.S. Southwest, and that has some people in California and Arizona seeing red...
"We're not getting oil for free, so why are we giving our water away for free?" asked La Paz County Board of Supervisors Chairman Holly Irwin, who represents a rural area in western Arizona where food companies affiliated with the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates have come to farm alfalfa for export.
Privately held Fondomonte California on Sunday announced that it bought 1,790 acres of farmland in Blythe, California — an agricultural town along the Colorado River — for nearly $32 million. Two years ago, Fondomont's parent company, Saudi food giant Almarai, purchased another 10,000 acres of farmland about 50 miles away in Vicksburg, Arizona, for around $48 million.
They will continue to come over here and buy properties where they can grow good-quality alfalfa hay and ship it back to the Middle East. It makes logical sense for them to do that because they're not going to be able to grow it in Saudi Arabia, especially for milk production.
Joseph Dutra, President, Westec
But not everyone likes the trend. The alfalfa exports are tantamount to "exporting water," because in Saudi Arabia, "they have decided that it's better to bring feed in rather than to empty their water reserves," said Keith Murfield, CEO of United Dairymen of Arizona, a Tempe-based dairy cooperative whose members also buy alfalfa. "This will continue unless there's regulations put on it."
In a statement announcing the California farmland purchase, the Saudi company said the deal "forms part of Almarai's continuous efforts to improve and secure its supply of the highest quality alfalfa hay from outside the (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) to support its dairy business. It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources."
. . .
'Beneficial use'
However, the issue of land rights
comes into play. As the owners of the land, the Saudis appear to be
playing by the rules. The area of the Arizona desert where the Saudis
bought land is a region with little or no regulation on groundwater
use. That's in contrast to most of the state, 85 percent of which has
strict groundwater rules.
Local development and groundwater
pumping have contributed to the groundwater table falling since 2010
by more than 50 feet in parts of La Paz County, 130 miles west of
Phoenix. State documents show there are at least 23 water wells on the
lands controlled by Alamarai's subsidiary, Fondomonte Arizona. Each of
the wells is capable of pumping more than 100,000 gallons daily.
"You can use as much water as you'd like, as long as it's put to a
beneficial use, and you're not required to report your water use," said
Michelle Moreno, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water
Resources, . .
Blythe Mayor Joseph DeConinck said between 10 percent to 15 percent of the hay grown in his region is exported overseas, but insists the practice is not contributing to the state's drought. ✓ The mayor, who also grows alfalfa, said he isn't concerned about the Saudis buying up land in his community.
"They are buying the ground to farm. There's abundant supplies of water in Blythe for farmers from the Colorado River," he said. "Our valley has the first water rights on the river."
READ MORE
Foreign firms sucking "virtual" water from America's parched Southwest
David McNew/Getty
This article was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Driving into Southern California’s Palo Verde Valley from the Arizona border, fields of vibrant green appear out of the desert like a mirage. Near the town of Blythe, water from the Colorado River turns the dry earth into verdant farmland, much of it to grow a single crop—alfalfa, a type of plant used mainly to feed dairy cows.
For decades, a significant portion of alfalfa grown here and elsewhere in the western United States—as much as 17 percent in 2017—has been loaded onto trucks, driven hundreds of miles to ports on the west coast, and shipped around the world, mainly to China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. A little over five years ago, one company decided it made more sense to own the land, and the water that came with it, outright.
The company, a Saudi Arabian dairy firm called Almarai, purchased 1,790 acres in the Palo Verde Valley to secure a supply of alfalfa for its dairy cows. Soon after, Saudi Arabia began phasing out domestic alfalfa production to preserve its water supplies, which were dwindling after years of overuse for agriculture. The purchase made headlines as critics including local politicians and environmentalists questioned whether it was fair for a foreign entity to use up valuable groundwater resources for products that wouldn’t ultimately benefit Americans.
But the company is far from alone. Foreign corporations are
increasingly purchasing land in the US; in the Southwest, thanks to
longstanding laws on water rights, these purchases often come with
unlimited access to the valuable water underneath the soil. . " READ MORE
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