Sipping From the Poison Well
It was an unseasonably cold day in Rimrock, Arizona. A winter storm hovered over the northern part of the state, dumping more than two feet of snow on Flagstaff and nearby towns. The record for a single-day snow accumulation was shattered. Schools, offices, and highways all shut down.
Wet snow like wall putty was slathered over the surrounding mountains, but being at a lower elevation, sudden gusts of whipping wind and a few straggling pellets of rain were the only signs of a winter storm.
It was January in the desert and I was returning to a relatively low-trafficked National Monument that I’d visited nearly 20 years ago. When I was nine, Montezuma Well left me with an inexplicable uneasiness. These are the memories of childhood — soupy, tangled, dreamlike. I wanted to know what shook me.
As I stepped from my car onto the crumbling asphalt of the simple parking lot, pricks of recollection rolled across my skin like goosebumps. Not because of some grand landscape or picturesque view but because of its ordinary plainness. The fine red dirt hills twisted across the vista, stretched like a rippled, prickly fabric. Thousands of creosote bushes pulled the eye over every dimple in the earth, gleaming like pointillism dots against the muted winter skyline. Finally, there was the single, smooth concrete path that wound up one of the hills and disappeared over its lip.
As a child, traveling to Arizona was my first time on an airplane — Pittsburgh to Phoenix — and I passed the time by drawing colored-pencil pictures of coyotes, scorpions, tarantulas, and all the other critters I expected to see. The desert was more myth than reality. A scorpion may as well have been a unicorn.
It was a steaming hot day in July when my mom drove my brother and I out from Sedona to Montezuma Well in a rental sedan. The drive was barely a half hour, but it stretched into eternity as my brother retched in the backseat — any drive over 15 minutes flushing him with motion sickness. I cried and my mom yelled at me for crying and between bouts of retching my brother also yelled at me for crying and so I stared out the window, hands tight over my ears wishing to become the raven careening across the landscape beneath the suddenly appearing gray clouds.
As I begged god to place my soul anywhere else, a rip of lightning opened the sky followed by a wall of hail that filled the shoulders of the highway with mounds of white stones. This momentarily stopped the retching and yelling and crying.
For a moment, I was giddy with the thrill of it while my mom moaned about the rental insurance. She pulled under an overpass to chuck the barfy plastic shopping bag and wait out the hail. Soon we were joined by a motorcyclist and the four of us watched the desert fill with mid-summer ice, dumbfounded.
Two decades later, I returned in the thickest months of winter, no thunderstorms brewing. It was so cold and moody in Northern Arizona that whole winter, ghosts could have risen right up out of the dirt and I wouldn’t have seen them through the thick, frigid atmosphere.
As I walked up the concrete path toward the well, I cinched the black hood of my thermal-lined ski jacket tight around my face, and wondered if it was possible for my younger self to sense my older self’s presence. Where did our footprints overlap? A silky black raven swooped low, rising up the curve of the hill. Filmy memories played over me.
In just a few long strides up the concrete slabs, I stood in front of a desert miracle. The earth gave way and an ancient limestone sinkhole emerged. The hole was filled with 15 million gallons of clear, blue water from an invisible burbling underground spring. In the middle of this desert, amidst a two-decade-long drought, water gushed up like a prayer from the earth.
A few weeks before I stood on the edge of Montezuma well watching abundant water heave out of the earth like breath, the sprawling town of Scottsdale, Arizona shut off the water supply to the nearby unincorporated community of Rio Verde Foothills. Scottsdale had warned the town for years that water cutoffs were looming as the Colorado River ran down to a trickle, underground aquifers dried up, and the state endured a megadrought. The community, however — built by “wildcat” developers exploiting a loophole in Arizona’s groundwater law that requires developers to prove they have enough water for 100 years — thought it was a bluff.
Before the water cutoff, Rio Verde already had a fairly tough time getting water. Most folks relied on water deliveries to tanks outside their homes, trucked in from a standpipe district that ran from Scottsdale to the edge of the town. Some residents had wells, but most didn’t. The ground is solid rock, and digging a new well can cost around $60,000 — no water guaranteed. When the water shut off, community members had to drive an hour each way to Apache Junction where they could collect water for a fee, or pay a water hauler to bring it to them. The price of water nearly quadrupled overnight, rising from three cents a gallon to 11 cents a gallon.
The water that bubbles up into Montezuma Well originated as snow melt on the top of Mogollon Rim some hundred or so miles away. It takes that snow about 10,000 years to travel through the stone palms of the desert to the bottom of the well, which made staring into its seemingly bottomless depths feel like staring into the startling oracle of time itself. Fossil water as some scientists call it. I thought if I could just see my reflection on the surface of the eternal pool, the doorway to mystery might open.
Despite the chill, the wind, and the rain, there were at least 30 or 40 other visitors making their way around the edge of the well. I stopped almost immediately to lean over the rail and gape at the dusty cliff dwellings still tucked into the limestone, holding firm for the last thousand years. I was simultaneously buzzing with the aliveness of the place, while also feeling slightly unnerved by a sense of cataclysm I couldn’t put my finger on. I couldn't shake the feeling that I’d stumbled across something dangerous.
I traced my fingers along the metal railing, descending into the cove of the well, grateful for the wind block of the sunken limestone hole. Even though 1.5 million gallons of water gushes up into the well each day, the surface of the water is nearly perfectly still, rippled here and there by a duck or shifting breeze, but otherwise glass-like. It seemed impossible that the water level could remain so constant. Regardless of drought or flood, the well level fluctuates only 16 centimeters throughout the year.
Some call the well “bottomless,” but everything has some sort of end. Pressurized groundwater pushes up through vents in the floor creating a column of fluidized sand nearly twice as dense as the water surrounding it. It rolls and roils, giving off a boiling-like appearance, never mixing with the water column above it. The true depth of the well isn’t fully understood as the fluidized sand is nearly impossible to dive through. Mechanical probes are pushed out by the pressure of the water. A 2006 dive team estimated the lowest point to be around 137 feet, but the bottom is likely much deeper. The same team proposed there may even be lower bodies of water within the well trapped between layers of fluidized sand. Bottomless wells on wells on wells.
Though constantly filled through these vents, the well ultimately drains through a small cave and underground stream into a prehistoric irrigation canal that eventually flows into Wet Beaver Creek. After 10,000 years of travel, it takes only seven minutes for the water to bubble up into the well, then drain out the swallet.
I followed the path down past the drainage and underground cave, around the backside of the cliff to the creek which was so full from the winter storms that it flooded several feet over the trail. The ancient irrigation ditch was still intact, though clearly rebuilt and lined with a black plastic tarp. I saw where it ran along the low-lying fields, where crops were once grown more than a thousand years ago.
The well is a meditation in consistency. Not only does the water level stay nearly the same throughout the year, the temperature of the water is also at a near-constant 70 degrees, providing relief from summer heat and protection from winter chill. The water is highly alkaline from dissolved carbon dioxide that bubbles up from the vents and also keeps the water at a perfectly stable pH.
So what could be so foreboding about this sturdy, eternal oasis? For at least 1,000 years, and likely longer still, people came to this well as a refuge. Most recently were the Sinagua who began constructing cliff dwellings around the well in the 1100s, creating these very channels of irrigation from the well out into the fields. By 1425, the well was inexplicably abandoned.
More than 40 million people in seven states directly rely on water from the Colorado River basin — including most of Arizona. I knew, even then living out of a camper that I was soon to be one of those more permanent 40 million. Despite my best efforts at making a life in Bellingham, Washington, I spent nearly every day of my two year residence fighting the overwhelming desire to return to the high desert. This nomadic time in the camper was a chance to figure out where exactly in that arid landscape I should land. Regardless of the rumblings of the West’s impending “water wars,” I knew I would inevitably be turning to the Colorado River once again for nourishment.
Those water wars may very well become a reality within my lifetime. The Colorado River is drying up. About 100 years ago, government officials mismeasured and inaccurately claimed the river could provide 20 million acre-feet of water per year and so split the river amongst the states. However, that was a vast overestimation due to measuring in an abnormally wet year. And because of climate change and continuous drought plaguing the American West, the river now has even less water — about 20 percent less than it did in 2000.
The American West is shriveling up and panic is rising.
As of June 1, 2023, Arizona determined that there was not enough groundwater for all of the approved housing construction outside of Phoenix. Developers had to look for new sources of water if they wanted to build. Governor Katie Hobbs said the state was actually not out of water and, “will not be running out of water.”
But with groundwater disappearing and the Colorado River drying up, the landlocked state may end up turning to the ocean to ensure they can meet the promise of ‘not running out of water.’
For years, Arizona officials considered constructing a desalination plant in Mexico and piping the treated water across the desert to the parched, landlocked state. Now, the Israeli company IDE Technologies has proposed a $5 billion project to make it happen. And lawmakers have already met with the company to discuss its implementation
Besides the absurdity of piping ocean water 200 miles up 2,000 feet of mountainous terrain, the project comes with extremely high risks. The Gulf of California (where the desal plant would be built) is one of Mexico’s most productive fisheries. But the waste brine that a plant of this size would produce combined with the relatively still waters of the gulf could create concentrated salinity and cause a massive ecological die-off. Not to mention the freeway-sized corridor that would need to be constructed along the pipe’s path which would cut through a U.S. National Monument as well as a UNESCO site protecting a fragile desert ecosystem. And don’t forget the water would cost 10 times more than the water from the Colorado River. Meanwhile, the town of Puerto Peñasco where the desal plant would reside currently can’t even provide enough potable water for its own residents — and likely couldn’t afford the water from its own desal plant.
If Arizona was already looking to the ocean for drinking water in 2023, how long would I have before this landscape I was so stubbornly drawn to transitioned to an unrecognizable water warzone?
While bopping around the small monument, scooping clear water from the irrigation ditch in my hands, I read on a plastic-coated plaque that while abundant and unremitting, the well’s water is contaminated with high levels of naturally occurring arsenic. The high arsenic level was the reason no fish were swimming in the perfect waters. As I looked closer into the face of the well, I noticed the water was eerily clear, and that other than a duck or two, almost nothing swam or grew in it. What does survive in the poison well are a unique breed of freshwater leeches, amphipods, and water scorpions that lurk 30 or so feet beneath the surface which so far haven’t been found anywhere else in the world.
That was the information I missed as a child (or learned but conveniently forgot) and sent electric currents through my limbs, making it, for a moment, difficult to breathe. I stood there, a tourist to dystopia.
The abandonment of Montezuma Well may not be such a mystery after all. The Sinagua likely had no idea the water they were drinking and irrigating their crops with was toxic. Arsenic is tasteless, odorless, and ostensibly undetectable by the human palette. There was almost no way of knowing. Some researchers propose that the Sinagua may have taken the swelling goiters and black foot disease that accompany arsenic poisoning as a spiritual signal that it was time to migrate out of the area. Turtle bones found in the cliff dwellings (a staple of the Sinagua diet) show extremely concentrated arsenic levels. It’s very likely this toxicant was bioaccumulating in many facets of their diets, slowly poisoning the entire community.
With arsenic-laden water trickling through my fingers, Montezuma Well suddenly felt more haunted than holy. The abundance of desert water was a false oasis. The empty rock dwellings took on a much more fearful tone. I couldn’t shake the feeling that these early people must have felt cursed as their flesh rotted from their bones and their neurological systems shattered.
Some have suggested Arizona could do with fewer people, fewer lawns, and fewer pools if water is such a scarce resource. And maybe that’s true. But 80 percent of Colorado River water goes to agriculture. A third of that goes to just a single crop — alfalfa hay. And a great big portion of that hay gets wrapped up in plastic and shipped overseas to feed the booming beef and dairy industry.
Alfalfa is such a water-intensive plant that in a heat-stricken landscape like southern Arizona it can take the equivalent of 46 inches of precipitation in a growing season to produce a season’s crop.
In a sense, we suck precious water out of the desert and ship it around the world. Sometimes to the very places offering to desalinate the ocean and pipe it to a landlocked state so that we can continue flooding alfalfa fields in the middle of a sacred desert.
Perhaps the foolishness is becoming more apparent. In late June 2023, politicians in California, Arizona, and Nevada agreed to cut 3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water destined for agriculture amidst growing concerns of a disappearing drinking supply. They targeted hay producers and planned to pay farmers $1.2 billion in subsidies not to grow alfalfa for the next three years. This alone could conserve about a trillion gallons of water — roughly enough for 17 million households.
Which is to say, lavish Arizona swimming pools feel enticingly frustrating. But it’s the relatively unseen alfalfa fields (and other water-intensive crops) running the West dry.
I left Montezuma Well and drove the winding road back to my 19-foot camper parked at Rain Spirit RV Resort in Clarkdale, Arizona. My partner and I had been making a living out of it for the previous six months or so. For all the previous time, we’d made do with our 22-gallon water tank and flush-less composting toilet at campsites and public lands around the West. There were showers taken at community centers, hours spent in laundromats, but for the most part, any water we used was either hand-poured into the tank from jerry cans or luxuriously hosed in from a local water refill station. For weeks and weeks at a time, we carefully balanced our water use and waste.
But at the RV park, water was unlimited. We hooked up a hose to a metal pump secured in a block of cement and attached the pressurized water straight into the camper’s plumbing. I lifted the stiff metal handle and in less than a second, we had boundless access to clean water.
“This is amazing!” I said to J the first evening we arrived. There was enough water to actually wash the soap from the dirty dishes, to rinse my toothbrush until the water ran clear from its bristles. I could let the water run long enough to actually slough the soap from my face before reaching for the towel. This was a newfound luxury.
Later, I stood under the lukewarm stream of a communal shower in the RV park bathroom. I couldn’t help but think of Rio Verde Foothills. That night, those families would be eating off of paper plates and using buckets of collected rainwater to flush their toilets while I doused my body in a seemingly endless water supply. A piece of paper taped to the bathroom door reminded guests to be conservative in their water use. I hoped my eight-minute shower followed the rules, but it didn’t change the fact that I was covering myself with Clarkdale’s groundwater while just two hours south, a town ran dry.
Native stories about Montezuma Well say that once something emerges from the bottom of the well, it can never be returned. Probes, cameras, ropes with sinkers have all been spit back up by the well, keeping its true depths and stories shrouded in mystery.
Similarly, once the groundwater is used up, a community can never get it back in this lifetime.
It took more than six months before Rio Verde Foothills came to a solution with the Arizona governor for water rights and access. By that time, I had already landed in a rental in Colorado where the city water was cheap and limitless.
In short, Scottsdale said it would create a new standpipe district and provide water to 750 eligible homes in Rio Verde for the next three years until they came up with another solution. It took another six months before the Arizona Corporation Commission secured a proposal with private Canadian utilities company EPCOR to supply the town with 49 million gallons of water per year. The price will start at 1.6 cents per gallon, but EPCOR warned it could go as high as 6 cents per gallon and would take another 2-3 years before the $12 million project was complete.
In that same timeframe, the Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation’s water rights case not far from Rio Verde. The Navajo Nation asked the federal government to ensure the tribe had access to water considering they had technically arrived first (and Western water rights function on a “first in right, first in use” water law system). They’d been fighting for decades to regain access to their water — and not because they wanted the profits of water-intensive crops, but to provide clean drinking water to homes, schools, and hospitals.
The Navajo reservation is the size of West Virginia, spanning multiple state lines, from Arizona to Utah, and New Mexico. The tribe is more than 300,000 people strong and the Supreme Court’s decision dealt an unholy blow, sending the Navajo back to fight with the states directly for water rights — a process which Arizona in particular has made purposefully difficult, knowing the amount of water tribes stand to unlock should they be successful. The six months 2,200 people in Rio Verde waited for a solution suddenly felt incredibly short comparatively.
Meanwhile, the pressurized vents of the well push out, push out, push out.
One night in early March, still hunkered down in Rain Spirit RV Resort, my partner and I woke to a foot of snow smashing down our pop top roof. J rose, turned on the space heater, and grabbed the brush and ice scraper from the Jeep to sweep off the solar panels. I slipped into a black bathing suit, wrapped a towel around my freezing body, and marched through the snow to an in-ground hot tub next to the now half-frozen swimming pool. The lot was silent except for the hum of propane heaters buzzing madly to keep up with the sudden cold snap.
The Verde River runs through the landscape just below the ridge of the RV park. It winds up and down the valley, past an expansive open copper mine, alongside massive agricultural operations, until it connects up with the Salt River north of Phoenix. In the 1990s, American Rivers listed the Verde as one of the top 15 threatened U.S. rivers — narrowly escaping endangered status. By 2023 it was in much better shape, something of a miracle. Only 10 percent of Arizona’s major desert streams, like the Verde, still exist today.
In an age of science and explaining away the mystical in terms of chemicals and atoms, it’s unclear what sorts of spiritual signs we’d need to experience before recognizing we’d made a wrong turn. Clearly, aquifers running dry and a river that no longer reaches the ocean aren’t it. Neither is an oversalted sea or a pipeline running through the desert carrying ocean water. It’s also not reservoirs dropping so low they expose sunken boats and dead bodies as they inch toward dead pool status.
So, what will it take? Even if goiters started bulging from our necks while our toes shriveled into necrotic black flesh and fell from our bodies, what excuses might we come up with to avoid the notion of a spiritual prod?
During that time, I wanted more than anything to make the West my home once more — this time for good. But what curses, what spiritual signals, was I already ignoring?
No, I thought when I read the headlines about Rio Verde Foothills. Not when I am so close to coming home. Even I refused to let the town’s misfortune serve as a premonition.
I sank my body into the steaming water of the hot tub while a mix of freezing rain and snow pelted my face. I ran my hands along my smooth, non-bulbous neck, pinching each of my ten healthy toes with gratitude while gulping herbal tea made with water straight from the tap. My body was buoyant in the gallons and gallons of fresh, bromine-treated water. Snow and rain bounced off my cheeks, each flake a prayer, each drop a possibility, every gust of wind tinged with hope, tasting of grief.
