Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said yesterday that her administration would effectively kick a Saudi-owned alfalfa farm off a critical stretch of state land, a move over the deepening dilemmas over water scarcity as climate change dries out the West. Via the Washington Post:

The move will prevent the Saudi-owned company, Fondomonte Arizona, from pumping groundwater that could one day serve as backup for booming urban areas. Currently, the company uses the water to grow alfalfa to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows.

Fondomonte came under fierce bipartisan criticism on the campaign trail last year, and Hobbs, a Democrat who took office in January, has been under pressure to act. In a statement, she said the state land department had terminated one lease held by the company and decided not to renew three other leases when they expire in February. The leases cover about 3,500 acres of desert terrain west of Phoenix, in an area called the Butler Valley.

A Washington Post investigation in July found that state land planners have been raising alarms about Fondomonte’s presence in the Butler Valley since its arrival in 2015 under then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. At the time, planners warned that the water there might one day have a better use, and that the state was not charging sufficiently for access to the land, given the value of the dwindling natural resource underneath it. Experts within the state land department also raised concerns in subsequent years about upgrades and other changes made by Fondomonte to the land, according to emails released in response to a public records request.

Elections have consequences, and another Democrat is doing what's best for the long-term interests of her state. You would think that Republicans would have had the good judgement not to give this natural resource away (at below-market rates, to boot) instead of thinking about the consequences of climate change. But Al Gore is fat, so there you go.

Fondomonte is a wholly owned subsidiary of Riyadh-based food and beverage giant Almarai, which grows water-intensive crops in other regions of the world to avoid depleting the kingdom’s limited supply of the natural resource. Since 2015, one of those regions was the Butler Valley. Agriculture is possible in the valley, smack in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, thanks only to the water drawn through wells like soda through straws. Because of minimal natural recharge and scarce rainfall, water pumped from the basin is essentially mined, with no replacement.

The Butler Valley is especially critical because it is one of just several so-called transport basins, where state law allows transfer of water to cities. But Fondomonte’s leases, which it secured for below-market rates, gave it the ability to pump unlimited supplies of the scarce resources.

You can't drink money, as people are beginning to realize. The Saudis know this! That's why it's illegal to farm water-intensive alfalfa in their own country.