The Soviet Union had some of the world’s most productive farmland and no shortage of farmers.Yet in the early 1930s, it suffered famine and mass starvation. In contrast, countries like Japan and Singapore manage to feed their people well despite having little farmland.It is socialism, not geography, that makes scarcity inevitable.There is a lesson here for Arizona.Phoenix, Tucson need a water exchangeBy restricting the transfer of water rights and relying on bureaucratic decision-making rather than market forces, Arizona risks repeating with water the dire consequences witnessed during the bread shortages in the Soviet Union.Most Arizonans live in a groundwater Active Management Area where the right to pump water is often tied to the land.This means that water can’t get to the other users, even if they are willing to pay more for part of that water than the current rights-holder makes by using it all.That’s an absurd waste of water and money.That is why I, along with Sen. Justine Wadsack and my other colleagues in the Freedom Caucus, will be introducing legislation in 2024 to create a water exchange for the Phoenix, Pinal and Tucson metropolitan areas that is grounded in the market-based principles on which America was founded.These areas contain about 80% of Arizona’s population.Instead of “use it or lose it” water rights confining the use of water to a narrow range of approved purposes there, we will allow anyone with pumping rights in these areas to sell or lease a portion of their water, so that this precious resource can get where it truly needs to …
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