Gov. Katie Hobbs stood before her newly created water policy council in May and essentially said, “Don’t be like the folks who came before you.”

Hobbs didn’t want them to meet for years, as her predecessor’s water council did, with almost nothing to show for it.

Six months later, Hobbs’ council has recommended a slew of legislation and an internal rule change at the state water department — a promising start, even if the centerpiece package dealing with rural groundwater is almost certainly DOA with conservative lawmakers.

But whether this effort moves Arizona forward or sets us back largely depends on what happens next.

It was a political miscalculation to start the rural water group with talk of regulation for areas that have none.

Not that it’s not needed.

Most farmers recognize that the groundwater on which they rely is dwindling and that they must do some things radically different to preserve their livelihood.

But at least some of their representatives arrived at the council with a growing sense of fear and distrust that big-city interests want to take their water and end their way of life.

Whether right or wrong, some farm interests felt they were being pigeonholed........

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