Title: Centralized versus Decentralized Approaches to

Groundwater Management in the Western United States: How

Hydrogeologic and Political Forces Shape Management

Randolph B. Flay1 & T. N. Narasimhan2

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?
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

1
 • 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

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).

2
 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 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

3
 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.
• 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.

4
 • 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
sub-irrigation 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

5
 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 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.

6
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 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.