SUCKED DRY

IN THE WINTER OF 2018, Laura Lynn moved out of her mobile home in Sunizona, an unincorporated community in southeast Arizona. After more than six years, she was tired of hauling water for drinking and bathing, and she couldn’t afford to drill a well — certainly not one deep enough to survive the impending squeeze once a nearby mega-dairy began to operate.

Lynn’s story epitomizes the challenges local residents are facing over the ongoing water crisis in this rural community, a problem that worsens every year and that no person or agency has figured out how to solve. She is one of hundreds of people, mostly low-to middle-income, living in a high-desert landscape whose groundwater is rapidly disappearing as water is pumped to grow alfalfa, corn, nuts, wheat and barley.

But the greatest pressure on the region’s aquifer comes from Riverview LLP, a Minnesota-based dairy company whose groundwater pumping is seen by many as the primary cause of their drying wells.

Far away in Kerkhoven, Minnesota, farmers Jim and LeeAnn VanDerPol have watched as their community lost many of its residents following decades of shrinking agricultural margins and increased corporate consolidation in the livestock sectors. Their former neighbors have been replaced by the five huge Riverview facilities within 10 miles of their house. In Chokio, Minnesota, about an hour away, locals successfully fought to keep Riverview from building a 9,200-cow dairy, citing concerns about pollution and groundwater decline.

Smaller dairy farmers nationwide have weathered years of milk prices below the cost of production that culminated in an industry-wide economic crisis. Now they face a new adversary: mega-dairies, or dairy CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). In Franklin, southwest of Minneapolis, James Kanne struggles to hang onto his small family dairy even as mega-dairies like Riverview compete for the few remaining milk processors.

This investigation follows Riverview’s rapid expansion in two of the five states it operates in, linking the environmental and economic consequences — and the lives of those who are impacted.

The people we spoke with in Minnesota and Arizona are 1,500 miles apart, connected only by the ever-growing presence and power of Riverview. But their communities have much in common: The local industry and resources have been monopolized by a deep-pocketed entity. The groundwater is being depleted and polluted. Incessant traffic, dust, lights and the stench of livestock cause home values to plummet and strain the emotional ties locals have to the places they call home.

SUNIZONA, ARIZONA — On a winter evening in 2020, Laura Lynn stood behind the counter of the Days Inn in Willcox, Arizona, where she worked as a desk clerk. Inside the quiet lobby — the walls decorated with paintings of cowboys, the continental breakfast bar closed for the night — she spoke resolutely about the previous decade, during which she had tried desperately to make a life for her family in an increasingly parched landscape.

Lynn and her six children moved to Sunizona in 2011 from St. David, about 55 miles away. They needed to find someplace cheap, Lynn said, so they bought 2.5 acres for $3,600. “I liked the rural atmosphere, but our main thing was that it was an emergency, and it was inexpensive,” recalled Lynn. “It was what we could afford with our tax refund.”

In Sunizona, population 212, tract, manufactured and mobile homes border dirt roads and the state highway that leads to the Chiricahua Mountains. Sunizona has a mini-mall, a café, an elementary school, a laundromat and a couple of churches, but no post office — not even a convenience store.

The Lynns first moved two RVs and a van, then a mobile home, onto their land, but the property lacked electricity and had no well. Years later, the family managed to get electricity, but water remained a problem. Almost every day for six years, Lynn and her children walked to a church a mile and a half away, where they, and 12 other families, filled 1-gallon jugs with water from a hose.

“It was a real hassle, but you gotta do what you had to do,” Lynn said. “I had kids and I had to make sure they were watered.”

The family wanted their own well. But it wouldn’t be cheap: Lynn said the well drillers told her it would cost about $40,000. Water was already scarce and demand was growing: Riverview would soon begin construction on Turkey Creek Dairy, its second dairy in Arizona, just down the road, and it would be drilling deep, she said.

At the time, Lynn was earning minimum wage as a home-care aide for elderly and disabled patients. She was living paycheck to paycheck, and far from alone: In 2019, according to the census, Sunizona’s annual median household income was $22,500 — just over 61% of the median household income in Willcox, 30 minutes north, and just 38% of the state’s.

Lynn could not afford a new well. She was also worried about the new mega-dairy and the traffic and other problems she thought it might bring. Ultimately,