This article was originally published by AZ Central.
Is Kearny’s water crisis a warning for the rest of Arizona? | Opinion
Water-hungry coal plants used to keep our lights on are also depleting our precious river water. Plus they can also leach toxic waste into our groundwater.
Ylenia Aguilar
For The Republic
Updated April 22, 2026, 9:13 a.m. MT
A few weeks ago, the mayor of Kearny, Arizona, stood in front of his community to discuss water and said the words no elected official ever wants to say: “It’s a life and death problem.”
Kearny is a town of roughly 2,000 people in Pinal County, about 85 miles southeast of Phoenix. Its residents are now under the most severe water restrictions the state allows – no car washes, no lawn watering, no kiddie pools. Families are being asked to wear clothes two or three times before washing them. If nothing changes, the taps could go completely dry by July 15.
This is not a distant climate projection. It is happening right now, in Arizona, this summer.
A few weeks ago, the mayor of Kearny, Arizona, stood in front of his community to discuss water and said the words no elected official ever wants to say: “It’s a life and death problem.”
Kearny is a town of roughly 2,000 people in Pinal County, about 85 miles southeast of Phoenix. Its residents are now under the most severe water restrictions the state allows – no car washes, no lawn watering, no kiddie pools. Families are being asked to wear clothes two or three times before washing them. If nothing changes, the taps could go completely dry by July 15.
This is not a distant climate projection. It is happening right now, in Arizona, this summer.
How do energy choices impact Arizona’s water?
Kearny gets all of its water from the Gila River, governed by a 1935 federal decree that cuts towns like Kearny first in drought years. This year, low snowpack and minimal rainfall slashed the town’s allocation from a typical 280 acre-feet to just 76. Unlike neighboring towns in the compact, Kearny has no backup water source. The mayor has said when the allotment runs out water will likely still be running through the Gila River at the edge of town, but the town won’t legally be allowed to touch it.
A few weeks ago, the mayor of Kearny, Arizona, stood in front of his community to discuss water and said the words no elected official ever wants to say: “It’s a life and death problem.”
Kearny is a town of roughly 2,000 people in Pinal County, about 85 miles southeast of Phoenix. Its residents are now under the most severe water restrictions the state allows – no car washes, no lawn watering, no kiddie pools. Families are being asked to wear clothes two or three times before washing them. If nothing changes, the taps could go completely dry by July 15.
This is not a distant climate projection. It is happening right now, in Arizona, this summer.
How do energy choices impact Arizona’s water?
Kearny gets all of its water from the Gila River, governed by a 1935 federal decree that cuts towns like Kearny first in drought years. This year, low snowpack and minimal rainfall slashed the town’s allocation from a typical 280 acre-feet to just 76. Unlike neighboring towns in the compact, Kearny has no backup water source. The mayor has said when the allotment runs out water will likely still be running through the Gila River at the edge of town, but the town won’t legally be allowed to touch it.Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!
I work every day on Arizona’s energy future. And I can tell you: what is happening in Kearny is not separate from our energy choices. It is a direct consequence of them.
Arizona’s remaining coal plants are enormous consumers of water. Before its retirement last year, the Cholla Power Plant near Joseph City alone consumed millions of gallons of non-renewable groundwater every single day. The Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico, which Arizona utilities including Arizona Public Service (APS), Salt River Project (SRP), and Tucson Electric Power (TEP) still co-own, continues drawing from an already over-allocated Colorado River Basin. The Springerville Generating Station, which TEP plans to operate through 2030 burning coal and will then convert to gas, sits in a region already facing serious aquifer pressure, as does SRP’s Coronado Generating Station.
What is left behind by coal plant operations?
And it’s not just water consumption. Coal plants leave behind mountains of toxic waste — coal ash that leaches arsenic, mercury, lead and chromium directly into groundwater. While Kearny families ration every drop, coal ash ponds at plants across the West are contaminating the very water sources communities depend on. The Trump administration is now moving to roll back the federal rules requiring cleanup of those ponds, handing the industry years of additional extensions and delaying accountability for ongoing contamination.
The message from Washington is clear: coal companies and utilities don’t have to pay for their mess. Average people do.
Kearny is what that trade-off looks like in real life.
Right now, APS and TEP are both developing Integrated Resource Plans (IRP), the long-range blueprints that will determine Arizona’s energy mix for the next decade and beyond. These filings account for costs and reliability. They do not currently account for water. That must change.
What can the Arizona Corporation Commission do to protect water?
The Arizona Corporation Commission, the elected body that is charged with regulating utilities, should require utilities to disclose and model water consumption alongside carbon emissions in every IRP filing. Arizona’s water reality — the over-allocated Colorado that is especially strained due to climate change, the strained Gila, the depleted aquifers — must be baked into the math, not treated as someone else’s problem.
Accelerating coal retirements is not just good climate policy. It is good public health policy. It is the kind of practical, non-negotiable decision that a state in the desert needs to make and make now.
The people of Kearny and the rest of our state are counting on their elected officials, their utilities, and their neighbors to take this seriously. In Kearny, they are wearing the same jeans for the third day in a row. They are timing their showers. They are waiting to see if the monsoon comes in time.
Polluters should pay for their mess, not the families of Kearny. Arizona cannot afford to wait for the next town to reach July 15.
Ylenia Aguilar is a senior campaign organizer with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Arizona.