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Water in Navajo County
What the state and federal record says about water across Navajo County. Each figure names the agency it came from.
Can I drill a well here?
Yes, an exempt well of 35 gallons a minute or less
-
Outside an Active Management Area
An exempt well (35 gallons a minute or less) is allowed for any use but irrigation, with no yearly cap. Domestic use includes growing plants on under two acres.
- Every well needs a notice of intention to drill filed with ADWR and a licensed driller. On five acres or less the county health authority also signs off the site plan, and no well may sit within 100 feet of a septic system.
What has actually been permitted in Navajo County
- 898exempt wells registered since 2015
- 1,442production wells of every kind since 2015
- 415feet, the typical exempt well depth
- 320feet down to water, typically
ADWR wells registry Decided by: ADWR, on the notice of intention to drill.
- 9,944 Wells on record across 9,997 square miles
- 390 ft Well depth middle value across 1,014 of 9,997 square miles
- 110 ft Depth to water middle value across 30 of 9,997 square miles
Point at any square mile to read what is on it. Hover the maps below to compare them.
Navajo County by the square mile
Each figure below is one number for the whole county. The map places the same records on the ground, square mile by square mile.
Wells on record. Every well ADWR has a record of, exempt and non-exempt together.
- none on record (bare ground)
- up to 1
- 2
- 3 to 4
- 5 to 10
- 11 to 40
- over 40
9,997 surveyed sections, drawn 3 by 3 miles to a square. The shading is scaled against every county in Arizona, so a color means the same thing on any of these pages. The outline is the county boundary from the Census Bureau: ground inside the line and outside the shading is ground nobody has drilled, filed on or addressed. Aerial imagery is the USGS National Map.
Wells here may be treated as pumping the river
0.8% of the county lies in a subflow zone, where a well is legally drawing surface water and falls under the adjudication rather than under groundwater rules.
Arizona general stream adjudications 1 of 9 counties
0.8% here 1st of 9 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
The water table here is falling faster than it used to
Twenty years of monitoring show -0.6 feet of change and the last ten show -2.5. Half the record has produced more than half the drop, so the decline is steepening rather than levelling off. A well drilled to a depth that worked ten years ago has less margin than the twenty-year figure suggests.
ADWR groundwater level change 1 of 10 counties
-0.2 ft/yr here 1st of 10 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
FEMA has never determined the flood risk for most of this county
68% of the county is FEMA Zone D, which means undetermined hazard. Nobody has looked. That is a different thing from being studied and coming back outside the floodplain, and a lender or an insurer will treat the two differently.
FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer 4 of 15 counties
68% here 4th of 15 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
Wells here have to go a long way down
The typical well is 390 feet deep, across 9,944 wells on record. Drilling is priced by the foot and the casing with it, so depth is the first line of any estimate for putting water on raw land, and it is the number a seller is least likely to volunteer.
ADWR wells registry 7 of 15 counties
390 ft here 7th of 15 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
Much of this county is tribal land
69% of the county is tribal land, where water rights are federally reserved and settled separately from the state system.
Arizona general stream adjudications 1 of 13 counties
69% here 1st of 13 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
A court has already adjudicated the water over part of this county
1.9% of this county sits inside a decreed area, under 3 mapped court decrees. An adjudication is a court deciding who owns what water on a stream and in what order, and once entered it governs. On an adjudicated stream the decree, rather than a well permit, is what says whether there is water to use.
ADWR decreed area boundaries 7 of 10 counties
1.9% here 7th of 10 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
The land here is sinking where the aquifer was drawn down
33 mapped subsidence features and no confirmed fissures yet. Subsidence is what precedes a fissure, and it is worth knowing about before it becomes one.
AZGS earth fissure and subsidence mapping 8 of 9 counties
33 here 8th of 9 One bar per Arizona county from lowest to highest. Point at one to name it.
For one parcel in Navajo County
The figures above describe the whole county. The Land, Development and Rights reports answer for one parcel: what water conveys, whether a household well needs only a notice, and whether the county requires an adequate water supply to split it. Each answer gives the evidence within a mile and who decides.
Search an address in Navajo County