PINAL COUNTY, AZ — This week’s monsoon storms left a local, family-owned farm under water and out of business. The owner says one corral was under 3-feet of water Wednesday night, and with much of the farm still flooded, about 100 animals are restricted to the smaller, dry areas.
Joshua Hill, Hayden Acres owner, says his family is taking a financial hit, and he fears it could be weeks before they return to business as usual, including offering class space for kids who go to school at the farm.
“Created a river, rushed a bunch of water onto the property,” Hill said.
That rainwater river swept through Hayden Acres farm around 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“The tunnels, those get flooded there, then it just breaks right through,” Nicole Waters, who runs Sunshine Integrative Microschool at the farm, said.
Hill says he and others worked late into the night Wednesday, moving horses and trying to find dry ground.
“We're shut down. We can't do anything, and we don't know how long it's going to take to get everything dried out,” Hill said.
Volunteers brought in heavy equipment, building up a dirt barrier and trying to keep more water out. Stalls and pastures are still soaked.
“The horse stalls, you can see they're like drenched with water. That means we have horses standing in water, which could cause infections,” Waters said.
It’s forcing about 30 horses and other animals into the dry spaces that remain.
“The first important thing for us is our safety and health of our horses,” Hill said.
The flooding is also hitting Hill’s livelihood at the farm, which offers riding lessons and non-profit services for veterans.
“We're probably looking at weeks of being down with no income coming in,” Hill said.
It’s also keeping kids out of the classroom. Sunshine Integrative Microschool, run by Waters, partners with the farm, using animals and the property for hands-on learning. Thursday’s classes were cancelled.
“Hopefully if we get more and more people in, hopefully, we'll get it by the weekend, so we can come back to school on Monday,” Waters said.
Hill blames drainage problems along the county road for water backing up and rushing onto his property, saying the same thing happened this time last year.
“It’s the helpless feeling. It's the fact that we have nobody to help come and bail us out,” Hill said. “We pay our taxes. We pay everything that we're supposed to hear for Pinal County, to live in Pinal County, and when we need them the most, they tell us the pound sand and they can't help us.”
ABC15 reached out to Pinal County for its response.
Ray Telles, PIO for Pinal County Development Services, told ABC15 in an email:
“Pinal County is responsible for drainage along County-maintained roads that are not in HOA managed developments. Our maintenance crews worked over the past couple of days to make sure our roads and rights-of-way are able to be safely traveled and that any drainage ditches are free of obstructions or potential backups. We can only perform work in our right-of-way and not on private property.
“This particular area has had a history of flooding. There are past studies that show that this property and the adjacent properties have a risk of flooding. We attempted a mitigation project along Kenworthy in 2014, but we could not fully implement it. I have attached the drainage report from this project.
“Our gauges show that this area had 1.89" of rain in the past week with .55" happening yesterday. Even with a fully improved drainage system, this much rain in that short amount of time will cause some problems.”
Waters put out a call for help on social media Thursday, which brought in more than 75 messages from people offering equipment, materials, and even their own farms to house animals.
“I think it gives you this really big faith in humanity,” Waters said. “Because people were just in every sort of way, how they could help.”
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