Different States, Different Management Strategies

For most of the 20th century, organized management of groundwater pumping in Texas was largely nonexistent. The rule of capture was the law, and how to steward groundwater resources was left up to landowners. 

“When tracing the roots of groundwater law and management in Texas, all roads lead east, and more specifically, to the East decision,” said Trey Gerfers, general manager of the Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District (PCUWCD).

That 1904 court decision, East v. Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company, made the rule of capture the foundational precedent of Texas groundwater law, in the absence of any state legislation. Texas property owners owned all groundwater under their land and could pump as much as they saw fit. (Learn more in “Texas’ Most Infamous Groundwater Lawsuits.”)

In 1949, the Texas State Legislature did eventually weigh in on groundwater management. It authorized the creation of local groundwater conservation districts (GCDs), now codified in Chapter 36 of the Texas Water Code, granting districts limited powers and requiring GCDs to work to manage, conserve and protect groundwater through rule-making and well-permitting. 

Texas’ first GCD, High Plains Underground Water Conservation District Number 1, was created in 1951. 

Texas groundwater management evolves

Over 70 years later, Texas groundwater law and management is a patchwork of precedents and local GCDs, which remain the state’s preferred groundwater management tool. 

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Texas, Kansas and Arizona, three states representative of increasingly stressed U.S. groundwater supplies, work to prevent aquifer depletion

More Information

• Locally Enhanced Management Areas (LEMAs), Kansas Department of Agriculture
• Groundwater Conservation District FAQs, TAGD
• Groundwater Vocabulary, TAGD

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GCDs must receive local voter approval to be established and enact rules. Districts can manage groundwater through well spacing and production limitations, and can place requirements on the drilling, equipping, operating, completing and substantially modifying of wells. Currently, there are 98 GCDs and two subsidence districts in Texas. (See Water for Texas Map Collection.)

“Because the rule of capture essentially allows just about anybody to pump as much water as they want, GCDs are the most effective means available to protect landowners and their rights in groundwater,” Gerfers said. “In fact, GCDs are typically created by landowners and other concerned parties, often in the face of a perceived threat.”

GCDs also consider and permit all applications for non-exempt water wells. Exempt water wells are defined by the Texas Water Code as all domestic and livestock wells that produce less than 25,000 gallons per day. Those are exempt from permitting, metering or fee requirements. All other industrial and agricultural wells are non-exempt.

GCDs maintain records of all non-exempt wells in the district and can enact permitting, spacing, metering or fee rules for those wells. Today, the state also requires that all newly drilled wells submit a drilling log to the local GCD.

One exception to this framework is all land under the jurisdiction of the Edwards Aquifer Authority, a south-central Texas entity created in 1993 to regulate and manage the aquifer’s levels in compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act. (See “Texas’ Most Infamous Groundwater Lawsuits.”)

For groundwater supply planning, Texas uses another tool: groundwater management areas (GMAs). Delineated by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), GMAs are made of multiple GCDs and must meet jointly to develop cooperative management goals and desired future conditions (DFCs) for the area. “In setting DFCs, GCDs balance groundwater production with conservation and protection of the aquifer and then manage that production on a long-term basis to achieve and maintain the DFCs,” according to the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts.

Modern-day Texas faces a triple threat of major population growth demanding more water, rapid urban and suburban development changing the landscape, and climate impacts changing the environment and weather. As surface water supplies face these pressures, and more providers turn to groundwater for supply. With those demands looming, some groundwater stakeholders have helped GCDs grow and become more effective at water measurement and management.  

In Far West Texas, PCUWCD was created in 1999 to proactively protect local aquifers when municipal water pumping and industrial impacts began concerning landowners. Their aquifers are currently used at a sustainable rate, Gerfers said. “But the balance is delicate; just one user or one city could disrupt that balance, and it's the task of GCDs to negotiate this fine line,” he said.

In 2023, Presidio County voters passed a proposition that dedicated funding to the GCD by allowing it to assess an ad valorem tax without raising net property taxes. With that funding increase and grants from government agencies and organizations, PCUWCD has increased its number of monitoring wells and improved data collection.

“We communicate to our stakeholders that the district has a legal obligation to understand how much water is being pumped,” Gerfers said. “And, the well owner will ultimately benefit by having a better picture of how much water is being pulled out of the aquifer. Because if someone’s not following those rules, then that’s going to hurt everybody.”

One challenge to groundwater management improvements in Texas is that people are generally resistant to change, said Lucas Gregory, Ph.D., Texas Water Resources Institute associate director.

“And, unless there is a real incentive to do so, changing groundwater management at any level in Texas is very difficult,” Gregory said. “Those incentives could be economic, drought-based, or even availability-based — but these often result in pumping simply stopping rather than changing its management. 

“Because of the way water law is set up here, groundwater users have to weigh the long-term benefits of conservation-minded management with the risk of their neighbor continuing to pump like they always do and potentially negating whatever positive conservation gains are made. Essentially, this can be a disincentive to use water more conservatively.”

  

Ag producers in Kansas do more with less

In Kansas, groundwater is a state-managed resource, and agricultural producers’ approaches to conserving the Ogallala Aquifer have evolved over time.

“The water in western Kansas is a limited, finite resource that supports our food and agriculture industry,” said Susan Metzger, Ph.D., director of the Kansas Water Institute and Kansas Center for Agricultural Resources and the Environment, at Kansas State University. “And that industry is the largest economic contributor to the state of Kansas. So, we're really invested in finding ways to make that a stable future for our economy.” 

Bill Golden, Ph.D., Kansas State University research assistant professor, has collaborated with Kansas farmers on water conservation strategies for decades.

“When I first started, oftentimes a producer’s perspective was ‘we can't live with less water, and we're already as efficient as we can be. This is the way my dad did it. This is the way I want to do it,’” he said. He remembers when perspectives began to shift: around the time aquifer levels began rapidly declining in northwest Kansas. If families wanted to continue passing down irrigated cropland to the next generation, something had to change, he said.

Around 2010, after years of meeting and discussing solutions to majorly declining Ogallala Aquifer levels, a group of producers in the Sheridan County area in northwest Kansas were ready to change the status quo, said Shannon Kenyon, district manager of Kansas’ Groundwater Management District 4, which includes the county. 

“I'm a firm believer that the best long-term solutions come from the ground up. Locally driven solutions have the highest probability for long-term success. And LEMAs are a locally driven solution.”

At the time, the only tool available was delegating an Intensive Groundwater Use Control Area, or IGUCA, which cedes control of pumping limits to the Kansas Division of Water Resources.

“These producers wanted to conserve water and coordinate with each other, while also controlling their own destiny; but we didn’t have a legal way of doing that,” Kenyon said. “So, in 2012 Locally Enhanced Management Areas, or LEMAs, were officially added as a provision to the Kansas Groundwater Management District Act.”

LEMA plans are based on stakeholder input, then written by the groundwater management districts and submitted to the Kansas Division of Water Resources for approval. LEMAs allow districts to set goals and control measures to conserve water. There are currently four LEMAs in Kansas.

“I'm a firm believer that the best long-term solutions come from the ground up,” Metzger said. “Locally driven solutions have the highest probability for long-term success. And LEMAs are a locally driven solution.”

The first LEMA became official in 2013 when the Sheridan County producers agreed to a 20% reduction in groundwater pumping, and the state approved it, Kenyon said. This original LEMA is called the Sheridan Six because it was the sixth high-priority area designated by District 4. The Sheridan Six farmers used various irrigation management strategies and technologies to pump less water.

And it all paid off.

“We can monitor the soil moisture data, monitor rainfall, use new irrigation technology — there are all sorts of things that we can do to use less water.”

“At the end of the day, they’ve achieved closer to a 35% reduction,” she said. “It has been monumental.”

“We can monitor the soil moisture data, monitor rainfall, use new irrigation technology — there are all sorts of things that we can do to use less water,” Golden said. 

He completed the first economic analysis of the agricultural operations in the Sheridan LEMA, a study funded by the Ogallala Aquifer Program (OAP). It found that with a 20% reduction in groundwater pumping, crop yields remained the same, and profits increased because fewer inputs such as fertilizer and seed were needed.

Around this time, most producers in Kansas believed they were operating at around 95% water efficiency, Golden said. But, success stories like the Sheridan Six showed that water use efficiency could be improved more than 5%. By being better water managers, he said, producers have not only extended the aquifer life in that region, but also made their land more valuable.

“Within that region, just within that first five-year period of 2013–18, they doubled the life of their aquifer,” Kenyon said. “One of the most powerful things that’s come out of this is that the Sheridan Six producers go out often and talk about what’s worked for them, and how many bushels per inches of water they produce, instead of bushels per acre. Instead of ‘whoever has the highest yield wins,’ now it’s ‘whoever has the largest yield on the least amount of water wins’.”

Arizona seeks solutions

Thousands of miles from the High Plains, groundwater stakeholders in Arizona are also looking for new groundwater management policies and tools.

Groundwater serves as 41% of Arizona’s water supply, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Arizona has three categories of groundwater use regulations: active management areas (AMAs), Irrigation Non-expansion Areas (INAs), and the rest of the state, which is not subject to any groundwater regulation but must submit a notice of intent to drill a well, said Sharon B. Megdal, Ph.D., director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. The state of Arizona does not follow the rule of capture; residents and landowners do not own groundwater, but instead have the right to use it.

Population growth and suburban and rural development have stretched-thin some Arizona ground­water supplies in recent years, and in January of 2023 Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs issued an Executive Order to establish the Governor’s Water Policy Council. It was tasked with modernizing the Arizona Ground­water Management Act. Megdal was an appointed member, along with water professionals, tribal community leaders, water users and legislators.“There is a lot of pressure and stress on our aquifers in our rural regions right now,” she said. “Most people agree that something needs to change. The work is finding common ground. The question always is, can the decision-makers come together and find common ground on groundwater management?”

After months of input and collaboration, the council’s recommendations charted a path forward.

“Many communities are facing aquifer depletion with limited access to renewable water supplies and no regulatory tools to manage the groundwater declines,” its January 2024 report said. “There is a lack of data points due to no requirements for metering and reporting groundwater use outside AMAs and INAs.”

Ultimately, the council recommended to the governor a “Rural Groundwater Management Area” (RGMA) framework proposal as a foundation for a new groundwater management program for rural Arizona.

The resulting legislation, Arizona House Bill 2857, was introduced in February but did not receive a hearing; it proposed amending existing laws to allow the creation and management of RGMAs. Other groundwater bills were introduced and debated, but no statewide agreement was reached. June 18, after the legislative session concluded, the council met and state officials presented ongoing rural groundwater legislation discussions and a detailed analysis of an “ag to urban” groundwater-management proposal. Discussions are ongoing.

“Arizona has a long and successful history of groundwater management in the AMAs,” Megdal said. “However, even for the AMAs, opportunities for improvement exist. For the rural areas where no groundwater management framework exists, decision-makers and water users are actively focusing on how to manage groundwater in a way that is tailored to the local communities and supportive of their vitality.”

Managing groundwater for future generations

“Our ultimate goal is to understand the health of our aquifer and how pumping is affecting that aquifer, so that we're not depleting it and not robbing future generations of water just because we're not managing it properly," Gerfers said.

“Simply pumping a well until it runs dry isn’t the only option — nor should it be," Gregory said. "That water resource is the lifeblood of Texas and we need to think about how to extend the viability of these supplies. Not only do Texans need water to drink, that water drives the economy. From agriculture to industry, water is a must and adds billions of dollars to the Texas economy.

  

"Technology advancements will continue helping us improve water management just as it has in the last 75 years. It will certainly come at a cost, but that cost is likely much less than not having those current sources of water.”

“Technology advancements will continue helping us improve water management just as it has in the last 75 years. It will certainly come at a cost, but that cost is likely much less than not having those current sources of water.”

As new policies and strategies move forward, states and regions will continue to take different approaches to groundwater management. 

“There’s not one right way to do things when it comes to groundwater,” Gregory said. “There are of course pros and cons to certain approaches. Ultimately, the decisions we make today will impact us now and into the future. Today, we must envision that future and adjust planning and management to get us there.”