Friend, colleague, and Groundwater Governance Goddess Sharon B. Megdal, she of the Arizona Water Resources Research Center (Director) and co-chair of AWRA's upcoming Tel Aviv conference, Cutting Edge Solutions to Wicked Water Problems, sent me a few things abut transboundary aquifers that merit posting.
Download Pub-pol-rev-summer-2017_0
The first parargaph:
Being part of the team working on the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP) continues to be gratifying. The International Boundary and Water Commission’s (IBWC) recent publication of the Binational Study of the Transboundary San Pedro Aquifer (San Pedro Study) marked a milestone. This publication is noteworthy in that it is a rst-ever binationally prepared, fully bilingual aquifer assessment, and because it was subject to peer review on both sides of the border. Also noteworthy is the framework for cooperation that has guided the team’s multi- disciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaborative assessment work. Signed on August 19, 2009, IBWC’s “Joint Report of the Principle Engineers Regarding the Joint Cooperative Process United States-Mexico for the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program” (Cooperative Framework) took considerable time to develop. The successful ongoing collaboration confirms the value of the time spent at the front-end to develop the Cooperative Framework. The team was able to persevere despite uncertain and very limited funding and the challenges of working in di erent languages and across an international border. I believe strongly that the Cooperative Framework can serve as a model for both transboundary water studies across the globe, whether or not focused on groundwater.
Principles of Agreement:
The six Principles of Agreement are as follows.
1. Activities described under this agreement should be bene cial to both countries.
2. Aquifers to be jointly studied, as well as the scope of the studies or activities to be done on each aquifer, should be agreed upon within the framework of the IBWC.
3. The activities should respect the legal framework and jurisdictional requirements of each country.
4. No provisions set forth in this agreement will limit what either country can do independently in its own territory.
5. Nothing in this agreement may contravene what has been stipulated in the Boundary and Water Treaties between the two countries.
6. The information generated from these projects is solely for the purpose of expanding knowledge of the aquifers and should not be used by one country to require that the other country modify its water management and use.
For more information on the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program click here.
Download the IBWC reports:
Binational Study of the Transboundary San Pedro Aquifer (English)
Binational Study of the Transboundary San Pedro Aquifer (Spanish)
2) From the Texas Water Development Board: Transborder Aquifers: A Summary of Aquifer Properties, Policies, and Planning Approaches for Texas, Surrounding States, and Mexico
Download GMR17-01_TransborderAquifers
Executive Summary
Groundwater in Texas is a valuable natural resource shared with eight
national and international states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, in the United States; and Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila de Zaragoza, and Chihuahua, in Mexico. Of the 30 Texas aquifers that provide groundwater, 23 are shared with one or more other states. Internationally, Mexico and Texas share four major aquifers and three minor aquifers, based on the Texas definition of aquifers (see Appendix A for detailed maps).
Decision makers and stakeholders for these shared groundwater resources have the complicated task for planning for and securing future resources without the commonality of administrative, legal, or policy approaches. Texas recognizes the importance of understanding the legal and legislative frameworks, planning and policy approaches, path-dependent1 actions, and aquifer characteristics of bordering states. This understanding will aid efforts to manage the development and conservation of groundwater resources in the future.
Legal doctrines that address groundwater management in the study area include prior appropriation, absolute ownership or rule of capture with and without modifications, correlative rights with reasonable use, and federal ownership and control. Groundwater is governed via various water doctrines which each state chooses, so a single aquifer may be subject to numerous conflicting laws, differing water management approaches, and unique public and private interests. Texas and adjacent transborder areas encompass a wide variety of geologic terranes hosting diverse aquifer systems. The western and southern portion of the study area, including New Mexico, Mexico, and west Texas, has geologic features modified by tectonic activity, volcanic deposits, and basin-fill alluvial aquifers. In contrast, much of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana have more regional groundwater systems in extensive sedimentary geologic formations. Another aquifer boundary is the connection between coastal aquifers and Gulf of Mexico seawater.
In 1985, Texas began the initial step of sharing information and establishing conjunctive planning efforts through proposing a multi-state commission to secure Texas’ future water supplies (Texas Water Code, Chapter 8). This commission has changed in current Texas statutes, renamed the Southwestern States Water Commission in 2015, and is repurposed to provide a policy development framework for surface water and groundwater.
Groundwater management in Texas occurs primarily on the local level through nearly 100 groundwater conservation districts. After 1949, when Texas adopted legislation allowing locally elected, state-sanctioned entities to regulate groundwater withdrawals, groundwater policy became locally driven. The rule of capture exists mostly unmodified in areas without groundwater conservation districts, but a variety of groundwater management approaches may modify the rule of capture within groundwater conservation districts.
The states that border Texas employ different groundwater management approaches to address their water needs. New Mexico’s aquifers provide close to half of all water used in the state, with 75 percent of the public supply and 100 percent of the self-supplied individual households depending on groundwater for drinking. Groundwater and surface water are managed together as waters belonging to the state, based on a landowner’s first historic use of the water for beneficial purposes.
Groundwater in Oklahoma provides about 44 percent of water use in the state with the Ogallala Aquifer, in western Oklahoma, being the largest resource. Oklahoma manages and permits uses of both groundwater, based on reasonable use, correlative rights, and allocation, and surface water. Oklahoma plans for groundwater for a minimum aquifer yield of at least 20 years with required 20-year updates on groundwater basin studies and envisions managing all groundwater resources using maximum annual yield.
Arkansas’ aquifers account for over 60 percent of the state’s water use. Water law in Arkansas is based on the riparian rights law subject to a “reasonable use” doctrine and uses the concept of sustainable yield to quantify the state’s groundwater resources.
Groundwater in Louisiana provides only about 15 percent of all water resources. Louisiana manages groundwater based on landowners having absolute ownership and a right to capture and use groundwater if there are no other laws in place affecting use or no injury to others’ rights. North-central Louisiana has seen some significant water level declines in the Sparta Aquifer where the state ordered larger well owners to report use type, monthly pumpage values, the static well water level, when possible. The state directed water users to identify alternative potable water sources to help develop a plan to move towards groundwater sustainability for the Sparta Aquifer with local authorities sponsoring a thorough water conservation education and outreach program.
Groundwater in Mexico provides about 50 percent of water used in the four neighboring border states. Water resources in Mexico are property of the federal government, and groundwater is managed on the local or regional level. When the state transfers permission to individuals or entities to withdraw groundwater, that right becomes private property. Aquifer divisions in Mexico are based on watersheds and do not compare directly to Texas aquifer divisions, although the geologic units are usually comparable. Administrative tools are available to the United States and Mexico to help create agreements and resolve disputes about shared surface water resources. One example is the 1944 United States-Mexican Water Treaty that regulates the use of water in the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) and Colorado rivers, yet does not mention groundwater. However, a treaty section indicates that all the water from Goodenough Spring along the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo), sourced from groundwater, goes to the United States.
States that share groundwater resources without shared management processes will experience unknown and unquantifiable consequences to those future groundwater resources, possibly affecting reliance of the resource. Opportunities exist and continue to emerge for sharing information and planning efforts for this resource that transcend political boundaries. The results of this study are intended to help decision makers and stakeholders understand Texas’ and her bordering states current groundwater resources, policies, and approaches to managing those resources and to identify successful steps forward.
3) Book Review from Sharon Megdal: Transboundary Groundwater Resources: Sustainable Management and ConflictResolution
Download Megdal-2017-Groundwater
Finally, this just in from Todd Jarvis - the MARVI and the MARVI Declaration!
4) MARVI Declaration - Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustaining Groundwater Use through Village-level Intervention
Download MARVI-Declaration-ahmedabad-may2017
About 60% of irrigation water for crop production and 80% drinking water in India is sourced from groundwater supplies. Basically, groundwater is a hidden resource and therefore it is not understood well in terms of the available volume and movement in a given area. Also, it being underground and its movement difficult to control, the groundwater use has been quite unregulated in India. This, alongwith easy availability of pumps, has led to the groundwater use in far excess of the annual recharge that happens during monsoon season. As result, the average depth to watertable in many parts of India has changed from 10 -15 m during 1960s to 30 – 40 m now and sometimes farmers are drilling tubewells to a depth of 100 m or more in search of water.
The future of agriculture and food security is very much linked to groundwater sustainability, and the challenges here are not only technical but they have important social, economic, institutional and policy elements. The critical research question we have is how to bring together the cross disciplinary aspects of the problem to achieve sustainable groundwater use while realising improved livelihood outcomes for village communities.
Lots of good stuff here - enjoy!
"If you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be sure it didn't get there by itself." - Tennessee wisdom - @algore on @nprfreshair
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