Texans who have drawn there water supplies from the vast but shrinking Ogallala Aquifer are engaged in a complex process of clarifying and/or renegotiating a more exact notion of just what rights they have to access the resource. A story in the Sunday Lubbock Avalanche-Journal provides an update.
Some clever “enviropreneurs”, to invoke a term coined by PERC, have devised methods to use markets to improve the use of water. See “How the market can keep streams flowing” for an example of a program working in the Pacific Northwest. But that example deals with surface water; groundwater presents greater difficulties for measuring and monitoring resource stocks and flows.
Groundwater gets some mention in this article by Gary Libecap on “Water Woes” in the American West, but it looks like a complete groundwater rights system remains to be developed.
Metering water use will be a part of a solution. Palm Springs, California has experimented with smart metering for water use with some time-of-day pricing – partly to economize on electric power use but also to encourage conservation of water. Clearly a different kind of application than West Texas needs, but it suggests some possibilities.
Has anyone put together a groundwater rights system that works on a large scale, or is this still a grand opportunity waiting for the right enviropreneur?