Arizona articles · What is pending
What is being asked of Arizona’s aquifers right now
Every other record in Arizona is retrospective. One is not: the queue of applications sitting in front of the state today.
Almost everything a water report can tell you about Arizona already happened. What was drilled, what was claimed, how far the water has fallen. There is one record that points the other way: the applications for an assured or adequate water supply determination that are pending before the Department of Water Resources now.
Assured and adequate water supply applications pending before the state. The only record in Arizona that says what somebody is trying to do next rather than what already happened.
ADWR pending assured and adequate water supply determinations · computed September 2026
The largest single request on the list is from the City of Benson, for 134,740 acre feet a year, filed in 2019 and still pending. That one application is a quarter of everything being asked for in the state.
Why a filing is worth knowing about
It is not an approval. An application can be withdrawn, denied, or granted for less than was asked, and some on this list have been waiting years. What it establishes is that development of a stated size is being pursued on particular ground, and how much water that development thinks it needs.
If you are buying nearby, that is the aquifer you are buying into, and somebody has already told the state what they intend to take out of it.
A queue is only worth reading if you know how old it is
Applications arrive and leave. One granted last month is no longer pending, and one filed last week will not appear in a list read before it. So every row here carries the date the queue was last read, and a report that cites the queue gives that date.
That is the difference between telling somebody an application is pending and telling them an application was pending when anybody last looked. Only the second is a claim worth relying on.
This is general information about Arizona law and records. It is not legal advice or a title search. What applies to a particular parcel is settled by the documents filed against it.