These 7 industrial farm operations are draining Arizona’s aquifers, and no one knows exactly how much they’re taking

Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents Fondomonte

By Rob O’Dell, and Ian James | Arizona Republic

The last time Regina Cobb traveled east of the Kingman airport toward the Peacock Mountains, the area was mostly unspoiled desert where cattle grazed on the sparse Mojave Desert vegetation. 

She had driven up the dusty rural road to store a bighorn sheep she killed on a hunt. 

Returning to the area 10 months later, she was shocked that the high desert landscape of cresote and cholla wasnow a 850-acre pistachio farm where more than 125,000 saplings had been planted.

Along each row of waist-high saplings, long black irrigation tubes stretched out to connect the seemingly endless trees and nourish them with water. 

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