Title: Centralized versus Decentralized Approaches to Groundwater Management in the
Western United States: How Hydrogeologic and Political Forces Shape Management
Randolph B. Flay 1 & T. N. Narasimhan 2
ABSTRACT
I. Introduction and Problem Statement
In the arid states of Arizona, California, Nebraska, and Texas, groundwater has supported much of the economic success of agriculture, industry, and mining since the late 1800s, and continues to do so. Early legal mechanisms to manage groundwater were largely limited to the consideration of “fair” apportionment based on common law legal traditions. However, these mechanisms, focused on small-scale disputes solved by judicial procedures, were soon overcome by the scale and complexity of groundwater systems. With the advent of high capacity turbine pumps in the early 1910s, overdrafting of basins occurred at an alarming rate, resulting in land subsidence, impacts to surface water rights, salt imbalance (less salt transported out-of-basin and increased evaporative concentration in-basin). Since that time, Arizona, California, Nebraska, and Texas have taken various approaches to reduce water rights conflicts and protect environmental values. The approaches differ significantly in the degree of centralization, the integration of surface water and groundwater, and the organization of localized groundwater management districts. These differences have been the result of various environmental conditions, interpretations of common law legal doctrines in each state, political interests, and legislative or state governmental assertiveness. This paper examines these shaping factors and the systems of groundwater management that have resulted in each of the four states. In particular, attention is focused on the following questions:
 How do groundwater management institutions differ in Arizona, California, Nebraska, and Texas, in particular with regard to the degree of centralized control?
 To what extent the management approaches realistically take into account the ability of the natural resources infrastructure to sustain current and projected rates of development?
 How have environmental, economic, and political conditions shaped the evolution of these management systems?
 Under what conditions has centralized/decentralized control worked better?
 How, in the future, may policy decisions may be made more compatible with the ability of finite natural systems to sustain development?
II. Presentation of the Project and Problem Analysis
1 Ph.D. Student, University of California at Berkeley.
Fascell Fellow, U.S. Embassy, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Mailing Address: Akmenų 6, 2600 Vilnius, Lithuania.
E-mail: FLAYRB@STATE.GOV
2 Professor, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley.
Mailing Address: 151 Hilgard Hall #3110, Berkley, CA, 94720-3110, United States.
E-mail: TNNARASIMHAN@LBL.GOV
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This study utilizes a modified Institutional Analysis and Development framework to help understand: (1) fundamental institutional structures such groundwater legislation, water districts and state administrative units, the court system, and community interaction; (2) the impact of heterogeneity and finiteness, and uncertainties of annual recharge in the groundwater resource and water users on optimal resource distribution, vis-à-vis externalities; (3) hierarchy in the transmission of regional priorities to local districts for implementation; and (4) the interaction of these components and the resulting level of centralization in each state.
The following indicators are used:
 Hydrogeology: physical and chemical attributes of groundwater basins, the interrelation of surface water and groundwater, the interaction of various groundwater components, and geochemical among groundwater, surface water bodies and the soil resulting from groundwater development. Systems of water management that do not take into account the effect of groundwater development on surface water rights, the cumulative effects of salt imbalance on groundwater salinity, and the effect overdrafting on supply security in the decision-making process do not efficiently use water in an economic sense. These externalities/heterogeneities require higher scale planning and goal setting and mechanisms to compel parties to implement a solution that maximizes benefit at larger spatial and temporal scales.
 Legal System: common law fundamentals, rules regarding ownership and dispute resolution, surface water/groundwater rights, and in-stream protections (e.g. Public
Trust).
 Management Structure o Water Districts: structure of the local water management entity, extent of authority and jurisdiction, and spatial extent. o Regional Units: state level structures, regional planning, strategic planning, goal setting, and decision-making mechanisms (aggregation). o Hierarchy: transmission of regional priorities to local entities, mechanisms for enforcement, regulatory or voluntary, conflicting boundaries (water district, county district, watershed). o Social values: philosophical tenets that guide harmony among various hierarchical levels of planning.
These indicators are examined in each state. Their characteristics and the interactions among them help understand how groundwater is being managed and where inefficiencies exist.
III. Discussion of the Major Findings
Arizona:
 In Arizona, the Basin and Range aquifers and the Rio Grande aquifer system generally consist of unconsolidated gravel, sand, silt, and clay, or partly consolidated sedimentary or volcanic materials. These materials have filled deep fault-block valleys formed by large vertical displacement across faults. When mountains encircle a valley, the aquifer in the valley is often isolated, enclosing groundwater. However, many valleys are interconnected.
 The legal system with respect to groundwater is similar to California, recognizing groundwater tributary to streams (governed by the rule of prior appropriation) and percolating groundwater (governed by the rule of reasonable use).
 As early as 1948 the state froze agricultural expansion having recognized the significant over exploitation of aquifers. However, the Arizona Supreme Court in 1953 determined
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that groundwater was not public property (under existing state statutes and common law interpretation), limiting state intervention.
 Only in 1980 did the state legislature muster the political will to pass the Arizona
Groundwater Management Act, under a threat from the federal government to lose financial backing for the Central Arizona Project to convey surface water.
 The Act created Active Management Areas (AMAs) and Irrigation Non-expansion Areas
(INAs) as legal subdivisions of the state. Within these zones, the state mandates water use control measures on a continuously more restrictive course in an effort to bring the
AMAs into safe-yield by 2025.
 In AMAs all sources of water, surface and underground, are included in management plans. AMA Boards of Directors have numerous tools to meet the water consumption goals, including legal right provisions, underground storage, conservation, and education programs.
California:
 California is dominated by the Central Valley aquifer system which occupies most of a large intermontane basin in central California between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast
Range Mountains. The Central Valley is the single most important source of agricultural products in the United States, and ground water for irrigation has been essential in the development of that industry. Although the valley is filled with tens of thousands of feet of unconsolidated sediments, most of the fresh ground water is restricted to depths of less than 2,000 feet. Groundwater in the valley is under unconfined to confined conditions, primarily depending on depth; most of the shallow ground water is unconfined.
 California recognizes two distinct classes of groundwater, that which is tributary to a stream and governed by the law of prior appropriation under Water Code Section 1200 and subject to permitting, and percolating groundwater governed by rules of prior appropriation and overlying rights but subject only to the jurisdiction of courts to adjudicate rights.
 Despite the efforts of state commissions in 1961 and 1978 that recommended to the legislature specific modifications to California groundwater law, no significant administration of groundwater exists. Through Assembly Bill 3030 (1992), areas of the state can elect to author a groundwater management plan, but any individual party can opt out without hindrance. The courts maintain an exceptionally large jurisdiction in the adjudication of groundwater rights, but the lack of any statutory guidance makes enforcing one’s groundwater right or curtailing another’s a very costly process that takes years to resolve.
 California does not require local water districts (with authority over aspects of surface water distribution) to submit plans regarding groundwater to higher planning entities.
There is no basin scale groundwater planning in California.
Nebraska:
 In Nebraska, the High Plains aquifer, which is near the land surface in most of Nebraska, mostly consists of unconsolidated to consolidated sand and gravel of Quaternary and
Tertiary ages. Dune sand that covers an area of about 20,000 square miles in Nebraska is part of the High Plains aquifer where the sand is saturated. Where the stream-valley aquifers overlie the High Plains aquifer, they are connected hydraulically to the aquifer and are considered to be part of it.
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 Nebraska recognizes both overlying and prior appropriation rights to groundwater that are reasonable and beneficial. As early as 1957, the state required the registration of irrigation wells, well spacing, and established a system of preferential uses. In 1963 the state legislature passed a law requiring a permit for wells within 50 feet of a surface watercourse, in effect recognizing a separate class of groundwater.
 In 1975, Nebraska recognized the problem of ad hoc approaches to groundwater and consolidated groundwater management authority under Natural Resource Districts
(NRDs) based on hydrologic boundaries. NRDs were given broad authority under a
Board of Directors to limit extraction and irrigated areas, and to adopt controls to limit nitrate contamination.
 In 1997, the Nebraska legislature gave authority to the NRDs to manage interrelated surface water and groundwater.
 The authority which an NRD (or the state Department of Natural Resources if an NRD fails to act) has to regulate ground water use is as follows: (1) it may determine the permissible total withdrawal of ground water for each day, month, or year and allocate such withdrawals among the ground water users; (2) it may adopt a system of rotation for use of ground water; (3) it may adopt well-spacing requirements; (4) it may require the installation of well meters; (5) it may adopt a system which requires reduction of irrigated acres; (6) it may require the use of best management practices; (7) it may require the analysis of water or deep soils for fertilizer and chemical content; (8) it may provide certain educational requirements; (9) it may require water quality monitoring and reporting; and (10) other necessary rules.
 The major instrument of groundwater planning is the Ground Water Management Plan
(covered in §§ 46-670.011 to 46-673.03). NRDs are required to submit their plans to the
DNR for approval. NRD plan contents include: (1) Ground water supplies within the district including transmissivity, saturated thickness maps, and other ground water reservoir information; (2) Local recharge characteristics and rates from any sources; (3)
Average annual precipitation and the variations within the district; (4) Crop water needs within the district; (5) Current ground water data-collection programs; (6) Past, present, and potential ground water use within the district; (7) Ground water quality concerns within the district; (8) Proposed water conservation and supply augmentation programs for the district; (9) The availability of supplemental water supplies, including the opportunity for ground water recharge; (10) The opportunity to integrate and coordinate the use of water from different sources of supply; (11) Ground water management objectives, including a proposed ground water reservoir life goal for the district. For management plans adopted or revised after July 19, 1996, the ground water management objectives may include any proposed integrated management objectives for hydrologically connected ground water and surface water supplies; (12) Existing subirrigation uses within the district; (13) The relative economic value of different uses of ground water proposed or existing within the district; and (14) The geographic and stratigraphic boundaries of any proposed management area.
Texas:
 The High Plains aquifer of Texas is in the Great Plains Physiographic Province. The aquifer is in west-central and northwestern Texas and consists of unconsolidated clay, silt, and sand. The aquifer provides large amounts of irrigation water and is the most intensively pumped aquifer in Texas. The Edwards-Trinity aquifer system is in rocks of
Cretaceous age that are in a wide band that extends across central Texas. In the western part, the Edwards-Trinity aquifer consists mostly of sandstone, sand, dolomite, and clay.
In the south, at the contact of the Great Plains and the Coastal Plain Physiographic
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Provinces, the Edwards aquifer consists of limestone, dolomite, and marl. The Trinity aquifer extends from the southeastern corner of Oklahoma southwestward into Uvalde
County in southern Texas.
 The first major legislative action governing groundwater occurred in 1949 when a petition process for designating underground water reservoirs and creating underground water conservation districts was authorized. This was expanded in 1955 to allow the
Texas Board of Water Engineers to designate such reservoirs on its own accord.
 H.B. 2 in 1985 changed underground water reservoirs to management areas, further requiring that groundwater districts be coterminous with management areas. The Texas
Water Commission was allowed to consider the use of political boundaries to delineate management areas. A process to determine groundwater areas experiencing critical overdraft was also instituted.
 In 1989, S.B. 1212 created the requirement for the Texas Water Commission (TWC) to designate water management areas through an agency rulemaking process. This bill also improved the delineation of responsibility among agencies, instituted timelines and procedures for performing critical area studies, and required groundwater districts to develop comprehensive management plans. In 1991, H.B. 1744 allowed local landowners in designated critical areas to establish underground water conservation districts.
 The most substantial modification to Texas groundwater law came through S.B. 1 in
1997. The bill established guidelines for groundwater district comprehensive management plans, requiring conformance with regional water plans. The bill authorized: (1) the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) to certify management plans to meet administrative requirements, (2) the State Auditor to determine if districts were implementing the plans, and (3) the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
Commission (TNRCC) to ensure district compliance with the plans. It also extended the planning horizon for studying priority groundwater management areas (PGMA) to 25 years.
IV. Conclusions and Achievements
Arizona, California, Nebraska, and Texas are part of the American West, and have followed different historical paths in water resources development. Yet, they are all part of an arid region and are dependent on a natural resources infrastructure in which groundwater and surface water are intimately interconnected. In turn, these bodies influence natural distribution of soils, the plants, and the ecosystems. Consequently, the evolving water management strategies of these states are united by certain common features.
The basic social value that governs water development in all these states is that water, vital to the existence all life, is owned by the people of the state. Water shall be used only for beneficial purposes and wasteful use is not permitted. To this extent, the state owns all the water and holds authority to assure that water is used beneficially, without waste. This basic value is supplemented by modern scientific understanding that all waters (above the surface and below the surface) are interconnected and therefore that surface water and groundwater have to be managed together, giving due consideration to (a) the vagaries of climatic change, (b) the needs of ecosystems, and (c) the availability of the resource infrastructure for future generations.
Although the realities of a finite Earth subject to the vagaries of climate are nudging these states towards adaptive living rather than aspiring for economic growth that cannot be sustained, the
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move towards adaptive, sustainable management is slow and much ground remains to be covered.
V. Key Points
In the western U.S., centralization in groundwater management is a function of common law roots, economic and environmental heterogeneity, and political will. Successful systems allow for local control via water districts based on hydrologic boundaries, regional planning and goal setting, and participatory decision-making.
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