Lingering concerns over water shutdowns, billing problems and poor customer service prompted a town-hall style meeting of Sonoita Valley Water Co. customers on July 9.
The meeting at the Sonoita Fairgrounds was attended by about 15 people, including attorney Steve Wene, representing the water company.
Sonoita Valley Water serves 71 customers and has three wells – one each in Papago Springs, Los Encinos and downtown Sonoita along the Highway 82 corridor. The Papago Springs well has been a persistent issue for the company and a root cause for many of the complaints voiced at the July meeting.
Lack of water capacity in the Papago Springs well forces the company to occasionally haul water from its downtown well to service Papago customers. That necessitates shutting down the system to fill the water truck, and the cost of hauling the water — $400 a load for 300-400 gallons – is passed along to customers through a surcharge that goes directly to the hauling company, not Sonoita Valley Water.
“Instead of fixing the Papago Springs well, they have been trying to band-aid it for years,” said Kelly Bostock, who owns and operates Dos Cabezas WineWorks and Pronghorn Pizza and a small bed and breakfast on the Highway 82 strip with her husband, Todd.
Wene, who is the brother of water company owner Gary Wene, explained that Sonoita Valley Water users are paying two surcharges, one that occurs only when the company is forced to haul water and a second one for servicing a $396,000 loan for improvements to replace failing equipment. (Approximately $92,000 of the improvements were grant funded.)
Wene said the surcharges range from $30 to $54 a month, but one attendee, who declined to be named, reported a $160 surcharge on his most recent bill of $480.
Several meeting attendees questioned the wisdom of paying $400 a load to a commercial water hauler when there is at least one local business that could do it for a fraction of the cost. But Wene said later that the local business in question is not certified for transporting potable water.
Wene said the Papago Springs issues date to the original buildout of the development in the 1980s.
“They couldn’t have picked a worse place to dig a well, right on top of bedrock,” he said. “The Papago well doesn’t run dry because of anything mechanical. There’s no water there, it’s like trying to get water out of a rock.”
Dos Cabezas installed a water storage tank for the winery/restaurant side of their operation a few years ago because of the “unpredictability” of water service. “You can’t flush the toilet, you can’t wash the dishes, customers can’t use the bathroom,” Kelly Bostock said. During harvest season (late summer), she said, winemaking would come to a standstill: “a lot of the stuff we do, cleaning barrels, washing tanks, and then the water goes off and you don’t know when it’s coming back on.”
The positive news is that the water company purchased land and drilled a new 1,200-foot well to replace the old one and has also installed a pipeline connecting the Los Encinos ans Papago Springs wells. Wene said the new well is awaiting electrical hookups and final approvals and could be operational within 30 days. “That should solve the (water hauling) problem permanently.”
Other improvements include an electric panel at the Papago well, a new storage tank and booster pump at Los Encinos and rehabilitation of the downtown system. Wene said because the downtown projects will require turning the system off and relying on stored water for a day or more, it is being delayed to accommodate heavier usage demands in the summer.
“My water bill is over $200. Oh my god. I do my laundry once a week. I live alone. I’m on social security. It frustrates me that I have to pay that much for water. I pay $50 to $80 a month for electricity.”
— Erin Bigford
Erin Bigford, who lives along Highway 82 and draws her water from the downtown well, shared details of her most recent water bill of $201.51. It includes $105.79 for 3,116 gallons of water usage (by comparison, the current cost for 3,000 gallons of water usage for a resident of Patagonia would be $28.81), surcharges of $51.70, plus various other service charges and taxes.
“My water bill is over $200,” Bigford said. “Oh my god. I do my laundry once a week.
“I live alone. I’m on social security. It frustrates me that I have to pay that much for water. I pay $50 to $80 a month for electricity.”
Bigford’s frustrations have accumulated. She recounted receiving a monthly bill for $350 when she was out of town traveling (the bill was later corrected) and having her water shut off on Christmas morning, when she was expecting 14 people for dinner.
“It just keeps getting worse,” she said. “The meeting didn’t do much for me. Everybody is angry.”
Wene said the company’s rates are set by the Arizona Corporation Commission according to a formula calculated to allow for a 10 percent profit over operating expenses, but he said Sonoita Valley Water doesn’t hit that benchmark.
“It’s a money-losing machine,” he said.
Wene shared 2025 financial documents with the PRT that showed revenues of roughly $117,000 and expenses of $70,000, but the revenues included $20,000 in surcharges that were passed through to other entities, leaving income of roughly $27,000. From that figure, Sonoita Valley invested $55,000 in improvements, thus eating up any profits.
The financial statements show that no one from the company is drawing a salary. Sonoita Valley Water pays Southwestern Utility Management about $12,000 in management expenses.
The management company also came in for its share of criticism at the July meeting, with multiple attendees saying that phone calls routinely go unanswered.
Bostock said she routinely pays $400 a month for water service for the B and B, which has two accommodations and is primarily occupied on the weekends. She had guests over Christmas and said she was on hold “for most of Christmas morning” waiting for an explanation of when service would resume. “You want people to have a nice experience, not having water is kind of a problem,” she said.
Wene acknowledged those frustrations and said the water company can and should do a better job of communicating with its customers.
“I heard the service complaints, I get that,” hesaid. “But the implication that somehow this is being used as a money-making operation is unjustified.”
Wene said his brother remains committed to operating the business.
“We still want to help,” he said. “At the end of the day, there’s 75 connections, the thing’s not ever really going to be profitable. He owns other water systems, hopefully at some point he’s able to make a little money off it. But five years ago, nobody would take it, he couldn’t give it away. Usually, you need about 200 connections to be economically profitable.”