How the reports answer

1 What each report answers

Each report covers one parcel. The Rights report answers holding by holding, for each registered well, grandfathered right, Type 2 right, surface water filing and Statement of Claimant on the property. Search is free, and shows the likely answers across a parcel's section, to 9 of the Land report's 10 questions. The Land report gives the parcel's own answers. Questions marked gated are held to the release gate in section 9.

The Land report asks only what applies to the parcel. A home, a lot or a business on a water provider's system is not asked about a household well, animals, the groundwater trend, splitting the land or what water adds to its price, and the report names the questions it left out and says why. A parcel is on a provider's system when it lies inside a town, or inside a provider's service area where the state has all but stopped granting wells, and no well of its own is on record. What stands on it is the county assessor's land use, or, where the assessor publishes none, whether an address or a building is recorded there. Five acres or more of cropland, irrigated land or an irrigation right makes it a farm, and a farm is asked every question.

Land report

For someone buying rural land: what water comes with it, what you can build on, and what to ask before you close.

1. What water will I legally have on the day I close? gated
2. Can I get a household well, and what will it cost all in? gated
3. Can I keep animals, a garden, horses? gated
4. Is the groundwater holding up?
5. Is it safe to drink? gated
6. Can I build here, and on what water? gated
7. Can I split it later?
8. Is anything about the water likely to change in the next five years?
9. What's land like this worth with water vs without?
10. What should I ask the seller, and put in the contract?

Development report

For the engineer or attorney on a project: how many homes the water supports, the paths to more, and the filings, with the rule behind each answer.

1. How many homes can this land support on water? gated
2. Which water paths exist, ranked by cost and time? gated
3. Is there a water provider that could serve it? gated
4. What will the county require to approve it? gated
5. Who's likely to object?
6. What's the timeline and the permit list? gated

Also includes the 10 Land questions and the 6 Rights questions, answered in a builder's terms, with a list of the filings and permits a project needs.

Rights report

For the owner of a water right or a well: what you hold, what could take it away, and the dates not to miss. Covers well registrations, grandfathered and Type 2 rights, surface water filings and Statements of Claimant.

1. How much water can I actually use or sell? gated
2. Could I lose it, and by when? gated
3. Can anyone cut off my water, and will it last? gated
4. Has anyone filed to pump or claim water nearby? gated
5. Am I in compliance? gated
6. What would it take to change its use or sell it? gated

2 How an answer is built

Each question is answered from conditions. A condition is one test the law sets, such as whether a parcel sits inside an AMA or an INA, whether its county requires an adequate water supply, and whether a well is registered to it. It reads the statute or rule that sets the test and the public records for the parcel, and returns a ruling.

An answer starts from the ruling of the question's main condition and takes in the others it depends on. Where an agency decides case by case, the answer counts that agency's decisions on land within 1 mile and says how many point the same way. Where wells nearby inform the answer, it gives their depth and yield within 1 mile. Nearby wells are grouped on a quarter-mile grid, so "within about 1 mile" can take in a well a little past it or leave out one just inside, and the parcel report's well table marks the wells the depth was read from.

Every answer states its basis:

State law decides this

A statute or rule settles the answer for this parcel.

From the public record

An agency's record settles it.

From decisions on nearby land

The agency's decisions on land nearby point one way.

Estimated from nearby records

Wells, samples or sales nearby support a likely answer.

The record doesn't settle this

The card says what would.

Every sentence an answer can print is written in advance, for each state and each outcome, and filled from the record. Each card lists the law it applied, with the words relied on, and the records it read, with the date each was loaded.

The answers a report shows are checked against each other before it is published. A well one card says the land has is the well the next card builds on, and land a provider serves is not told to drill. A report whose answers disagree is held back until the cause is fixed.

3 Documents read, and checked

Some records are documents rather than data: the objection files of the general stream adjudications, ADWR's imaged filings and protests, and the court's mailing lists. A model reads each one, and nothing it reads is kept unless the document says it. Every name, number and quote is matched against the document's own text, and a figure the text does not contain is dropped.

Where a person has read a document or a name, that reading outranks the model's. The reviewed lists are part of every build: the parties to objections, with spellings, households and estates joined and counsel and agents set apart. A daily check lists any name a report could print that no one has reviewed.

A county's rules are read from its current published code. Where a county does not publish them, or its current text cannot be confirmed, the answer says It depends, names what the county does publish, and says why.

4 Who is likely to object

The Development report asks who is likely to object to a water filing near the parcel. It reads the objections filed in the general stream adjudications and the protests filed with ADWR, read page by page for who objected and why. An objection is placed at every report, claim, well or application it names. On the court's form that includes the objector's own claims, so a party counts as nearby when its own water claims are near the parcel, as well as when it objected to a use there.

Each party is counted once. A household, its trust and its estate are one party, and so are the spellings of one name; lawyers and agents acting for a party are not parties. The answer names who has objected nearby and how often, and where the record says, on what grounds and how those cases ended, with the distance on the card. It describes who watches the water there; it does not predict an objection to any one filing.

5 Water from a provider

A parcel is served by a water system when it lies in an area the system serves in practice and no well of record is on it. For a served parcel, the Land report reads three things from the provider's own documents.

• Tap fee. What the provider charges for water to connect a new single-family home: its tap fee, system development charge, plant investment fee, water resource fee or cash in lieu of raw water, from its fee schedule or city code. Sewer, meter and permit fees are left out. Where the fee differs inside and outside a city, or by lot size, the report gives the one that applies to the parcel.
• Watering rules. The rule a household follows to water a lawn now, from the provider's drought page or its latest notice, with the date it took effect where the provider gives one.
• Lead service lines. What the provider's service line inventory lists for the line to the address, where it publishes one by address. Otherwise, the counts it reports to EPA, which do not say which addresses.

Every fee and watering rule is read by a person from the provider's own page or schedule, never from a news story or a list someone else compiled, and kept with the page's address and a line quoted from it. Each month the page is fetched again and the line looked for. A rule whose line has not been found in 62 days is no longer printed. Watering rules change with the season, so a summer page is never read as the rule in force after it ends.

Where a provider publishes no fee schedule, or no current watering rule, the report says so and gives the provider's phone and email from its record in the federal drinking water register.

6 Settled, Likely and It depends

Settled

The law or the public record decides the answer for this parcel.

Likely

The answer is estimated from nearby records or decisions. The card begins “Likely” and shows the evidence.

It depends

The answer turns on something the public record does not hold, such as a deed or the date a lot was created. The card states each outcome and what decides between them.

In a section's free Land summary, an answer that differs between parcels is marked Varies, with each answer and the number of parcels it covers.

7 Who decides

Every answer names who has the final say and the next step to take with them. For example:

• ADWR, on a notice of intent to drill and on assured and adequate water supply
• The adjudication court, on the amount and priority of a claimed surface right
• The county, on a plat or a lot split
• The deed and the title search, on what conveys at closing

A report reads the public record. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the decision it names.

8 Who to contact

When a next step names someone, the card says how to reach them. Where one office is the right one for the land, it is shown in full: name, phone, email and website, with where it was read and when. Where the buyer chooses among many, the card lists them, ranked.

• County planning offices: read on each county's own website, and checked there every month.
• Town offices: the state municipal league's directory of its towns.
• Water systems: the state's community water system records and the federal drinking water register.
• Well drillers: the state's list of licensed well drillers, ranked by the wells each has drilled in the county since 2016.

Where we hold no contact, the card says so rather than leave the step without one.

9 The release gate

A gated question ships in Arizona only when its answer is Settled on at least 80% of the state's rural parcels. Rights questions are measured on every holding. A Likely answer does not count toward the bar.

Where the law, or a public record that does not exist, makes a Settled answer impossible, a confirmed exception lets a parcel count. Its card must give the likely answer and name the document that decides it. These are the exceptions in force in Arizona:

10 Records and datasets

Each report lists what is on record on the parcel and within 1 mile: registered wells, surface water filings (stock ponds, springs and washes), earth fissures, land subsidence, flood zones, wildfire risk and where hauled water is sold (town stations, water company standpipes and Navajo chapter water points). Each row gives its distance from the parcel and links to the agency's own page where there is one. The map draws wells, streams and flood zones.

Every dataset below is published by a public agency. Each report lists the ones it read, with their load dates.

Load dates as of October 9, 2026. A fixed reference is a dataset published once, such as the national stream network.

11 The download

A report downloads as one zip file:

• report.pdf: the report as published.
• answers.csv: every answer, with its confidence, basis, who decides and its sources.
• sources.csv: every law and record cited, with the words relied on and each dataset's age.
• wells.csv: the records on and near the parcel, when the report lists any.
• holdings.csv, dates.csv, checklist.csv: the holdings, deadlines and documents to ask for, when the report has them.
• README.txt: the subject, the record date and what each file holds.

A report is published under a version and never overwritten, so the files always match the report of that version.

12 What the reports do not cover

• Title. A report does not search title or confirm who owns the parcel.
• Liens and encumbrances. A report does not search for them.
• Legal access. A report does not establish a right of way to the parcel.
• Appraisal. The Land report compares sales nearby with and without water. It does not value the parcel.
• Legal advice. Each answer names who decides; that decision is theirs.