What a Drone Can't Tell You About a Well or Water on Arizona Land

"Well on property" is one of the most valuable lines a rural Arizona listing can carry, and one of the least specific. It might describe a working, registered domestic well with a recent flow test. It might describe a capped casing nobody has pumped in twenty years, or a windmill that last turned before the current owner bought the place.

An aerial flyover is a good way to find and photograph the water infrastructure on a parcel. It is not a way to learn anything about the water. This article is about where that line falls, and where to look for the rest.

What the aircraft can see

From a few hundred feet and from oblique angles, most visible water infrastructure on a parcel is easy to locate and photograph:

• Well heads and pump housings, if they are not under a roof. A well inside a pump house shows as a pump house.
• Storage tanks, including their approximate size relative to other structures, and obvious damage such as dents, rust streaks or a collapsed lid.
• Troughs and drinkers, and whether they held water on the day of the flight.
• Stock ponds (dirt tanks), the condition of the berm, and whether there was water in them that day.
• Windmills, including missing blades, a leaning tower or a broken tail.
• Solar pumping arrays, typically a small panel rack near a well head.
• Pipelines, where they are above ground or where a trench line is still visible.

That tells you what exists, where it sits relative to the boundary and the building site, and its visible condition, so you know what to ask the seller about. A green patch next to a trough might be a leak, an overflow or nothing; the photograph tells you to ask. The imagery is visible-light photography. It records surfaces, not anything underground or anything about the water.

What it cannot tell you

None of the following can be read from an aerial image of any kind:

• Whether the well is registered with ADWR, and to whom.
• How deep it is, or how it was constructed.
• Its yield: how many gallons per minute it will produce, and for how long.
• The static water level, or how far it drops when pumping.
• The water quality.
• Whether the pump and well work at all.
• Whether the well is shared with another parcel, or whether the pipeline you can see feeds someone else.
• Whether there is a legal right to use the water for what you have in mind.

Those questions are answered by records, by tests and by people with the right license. Here is where to start.

The ADWR well registry

ADWR keeps the Wells55 database, and you can search it by parcel number. Wells are registered to the parcel where they are physically located. Each registered well has a unique number beginning with "55-" followed by six digits. If a search turns up nothing, ADWR suggests calling them with the parcel number in hand; unregistered wells can face enforcement, though most wells are registered, often under a previous owner's name.

Through ADWR's Imaged Records you can open the scanned file for a well and download it as a PDF. According to the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension's guide to well records, the Wells55 files cover wells registered since 1980, and the file can include the driller's log (form DWR 55-55), which the driller files after completing the well and which contains the well construction information and a description of the geologic formations encountered. Older wells may be filed under a separate category.

Two things to know about the registry:

• It is often out of date on ownership. Recording a deed does not notify ADWR. The guide notes that many wells stay listed under the person who first registered them. When the land under a well changes hands, ADWR asks for a 55-71A Request to Change Well Information, which escrow can file at closing.
• A record is not a performance report. A file tells you a well was registered and how it was built. It does not tell you what it does today.

Active Management Areas and INAs in Cochise County

Arizona manages groundwater more tightly in some basins than others. Two of those designations cover large parts of Cochise County.

The Willcox AMA was designated on January 8, 2025. Inside it, irrigation is limited to acres legally irrigated during the five years before October 23, 2024. Non-exempt wells, those pumping more than 35 gallons per minute, must measure withdrawals with an approved device and report annually. Exempt wells generally are not required to measure and report. There is more on what that means for farms in what Willcox AMA growers must document.

The Douglas AMA was created by local election in 2022 and covers the whole Douglas basin. Before that, part of the basin was the Douglas Irrigation Non-Expansion Area. In an INA, as ADWR describes them, new acres generally cannot be brought into irrigation, though both exempt and non-exempt wells can still be drilled. An AMA goes further, as the Willcox rules above show, and the Douglas AMA has its own rules and dates, so check ADWR for the current position.

For a buyer, the practical reading is this. If you plan to irrigate a field or an orchard, the AMA a parcel sits in may decide whether you can do it at all, and you should get an answer from ADWR before you buy. If you plan to build a house, the usual path is an exempt well.

Exempt wells, in general terms

Under A.R.S. § 45-454, a well is exempt when its pump has a maximum capacity of not more than 35 gallons per minute and it is used for non-irrigation purposes. Some general points from the statute:

• A notice of intention to drill must be filed with ADWR before drilling. ADWR's FAQ notes the most commonly used form is the 55-40 Notice of Intent to Drill.
• Exempt wells are allowed inside an AMA. For wells drilled on or after April 28, 1983, uses other than domestic and stock watering are capped at 10 acre-feet a year inside an AMA.
• Generally, only one exempt well may serve the same non-irrigation use at the same location, with narrow exceptions.

That is a summary, not a reading of how the statute applies to any particular parcel.

When there is no well

Plenty of rural parcels in southeast Arizona have no well, and plenty of people live on them. Hauled water stored in a cistern or tank is a common arrangement, and rainwater catchment can supplement it. The trade-offs are cost per gallon, the trips, and the road: a water truck or a pickup with a tank on it has to get in year-round, which is one more reason to look hard at the access route.

The Arizona Department of Real Estate's buyer checklist tells raw-land buyers to find out "how much it will cost to have a well dug if necessary." A licensed driller can give you a sense of likely depth and cost from nearby well logs. ADWR keeps a list of licensed drillers and can confirm whether one is licensed and in good standing.

Before you buy land with a well

• Get the registration number and pull the file from Imaged Records yourself.
• Ask for the driller's log if it is not in the file, and any pump or repair records the seller has.
• Ask for a well test by a driller or pump contractor before closing: flow rate over time and water level, not a turn of the tap.
• Test the water. ADWR does not test water quality. Its FAQ points to the Arizona Department of Health Services, which keeps a list of certified labs and recommends testing a new well for several contaminants, then annually for total coliform bacteria and nitrates, and every five years for arsenic, fluoride and uranium.
• If the well is shared, get the sharing arrangement in writing and ask your title company whether anything about it is recorded.
• Make sure the 55-71A gets filed at closing so the well is registered to you.

Where a flyover fits

The aerial part of this is modest and worth doing for what it is. A water and improvements inventory (+$125 on a land job, from $375 for a parcel up to 40 acres; see pricing) locates and photographs each well head, tank, trough, pond, windmill and visible line on the parcel, close enough to judge visible condition, and shows where each sits relative to the parcel lines. That gives you a list of specific things to ask the seller and the driller about, before you are standing in front of them.

If you are weighing more than one parcel, the full checklist is in comparing two vacant parcels without visiting either, and what a drone flyover shows before you drive out covers the rest of what the imagery is good for. The deliverables are on the real estate aerial media page, and you can send a parcel number through the contact page.

What the aircraft will not do is tell you there is water. For that, you need the records, the test and the driller.