ABSTRACT:Conflicts caused through development of urban areas in proximity to irrigated agriculture in water‐scarce regions can be minimized through the direct urbanization of irrigated lands. This shifts the water supply from one use to another on the same site rather than creating an additional use in an adjoining area. This condition has prevailed in the Phoenix region. In the Tucson region, the municipality is buying and retiring farmland in an adjacent agricultural area, for the purpose of acquiring the water right in order to transfer water to municipal use. This land purchase is necessitated by existing Arizona water law, which ties the water to the land. This method of transfer creates problems concerning how much water can be transferred per acre retired; what to do with the abandoned farmland; inequities to agribusiness and taxing entities; and loss of food crop production which have not been resolved. An alternative to the retirement of farms, applicable in the Tucson region, is to exchange treated municipal wastewater for irrigation water. While this method appears to be the least disruptive, it requires the resolution of certain institutional problems concerned with land and water management metho
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