A.R.S. 45-596: Notice of Intention to Drill a Well

You cannot just hire a rig and start boring for water in Arizona. A.R.S. 45-596 puts a mandatory step in front of every well: the Notice of Intention to Drill, a form filed with the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) before anyone drills a new well or deepens an existing one. ADWR reviews the notice and, if it clears, mails back a drilling card that authorizes the work. No card, no legal drilling.

What the statute requires

The rule bars drilling until the notice is on file and approved, and it ties the work to a physical authorization the driller must have in hand.

A person may not drill or cause to be drilled any well or deepen an existing well unless that person has filed a notice of intention to drill a well with the director and has received a drilling card.

ADWR reviews the notice within a set period (generally about 15 days) and, once approved, records it and mails a drilling card to the licensed well driller, who can only then proceed. The filing fee is $150 for most wells, but it drops to $100 for a small domestic exempt well: one outside an Active Management Area, used solely for domestic purposes, with a pump capacity of no more than 35 gallons per minute.

What this means for you

If your rural build depends on a well, this notice is a gating item on your schedule, not an afterthought, and it has to be approved before drilling begins. In practice your licensed well driller usually prepares and files the notice for you, since the drilling card is mailed to the driller and is what legally clears them to start. Build the review window into your timeline so the well does not become the bottleneck that delays your foundation.

A concrete example. You own land near Rio Verde and plan a single home on a domestic exempt well outside any Active Management Area. Your driller files the Notice of Intention to Drill with ADWR, pays the $100 reduced fee because the well qualifies as a small exempt domestic well, and waits for the drilling card to arrive before the rig turns. If the same well were larger or inside a regulated area, the fee would be $150 and additional conditions could apply. Skipping the notice is not a paperwork shortcut; drilling without an approved card is a violation, and a well with no record on file can stall a future land sale or financing because the buyer's lender cannot verify a legal water source.

How this connects to the rest of the law

This filing is the action step that follows the exempt-well definition in A.R.S. 45-454 : the $100 reduced fee here is reserved for exactly the small exempt domestic wells that section defines, so the two statutes work as a pair. On a rural lot the well and the septic system are the twin utility hurdles, which is why the same property also needs a percolation test for its septic drain field. For the applied walkthrough, see what is an ADWR notice of intent to drill a well , the full land checklist in what you need to build on rural land in Rio Verde , and the multi-home case in what is a shared well agreement in Arizona .

Full text and source

Read the current version, including the review timeline and the additional information required for Colorado River water wells, on the legislature's site: View A.R.S. 45-596 on azleg.gov .

Since the drilling card is mailed to your licensed driller and the fee turns on whether the well qualifies as exempt, line up your driller and confirm the well's classification with ADWR before scheduling the rig.