Grantee Research Project Results
1998 Progress Report: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Conjunctive Management Practices Among Three Southwestern States
EPA Grant Number: R824781Title: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Conjunctive Management Practices Among Three Southwestern States
Investigators: Schlager, Edella , Blomquist, William
Institution: University of Arizona , Indiana University - Bloomington
Current Institution: University of Arizona , Indiana University - Purdue University - Indianapolis
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: June 1, 1996 through May 1, 1999
Project Period Covered by this Report: June 1, 1997 through May 1, 1998
Project Amount: $198,000
RFA: Water and Watersheds (1995) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Watersheds , Water
Objective:
Among the more popular contemporary recommendations for improved watershed use and protection is conjunctive use of surface and underground water resources. Conjunctive use involves taking into account the relative advantages of surface water supplies and storage and groundwater supplies and storage when rechargeable aquifers exist within a watershed. Conjunctive use programs represent deliberate attempts to coordinate these advantages. When they are plentiful, surface water supplies are used to meet both instream and direct consumptive purposes, and any remaining surplus surface water is stored underground through aquifer recharge. When they are scarce, surface water supplies can be directed to instream flow needs and other high priorities, while stored groundwater is used to satisfy most consumptive demands. In the process, both surface and underground water storage capacity is made available for the next round of heavier inflows.Conjunctive use in a watershed requires a great deal of joint effort among human beings, the prospects for which will be affected strongly, though not exclusively, by institutional arrangements that define organizational forms and jurisdictions and provide incentives and disincentives to individuals. Using a three-state comparison, this research project seeks to advance the theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationships between institutional arrangements governing the allocation, use, and protection of water resources and the development, implementation, and performance of conjunctive use programs.
Arizona, California, and Colorado were chosen for this empirical study because of their shared characteristics. All three have experienced the pressures of growth and development. All three are located in the relatively arid Southwest. All three experience significant current and potential problems stemming from water supply maldistribution and water quality degradation, and the institutional arrangements in the three states differ substantially.
We developed a series of coding forms that we applied to each conjunctive management project, allowing us to collect a consistent set of data across projects. The coding forms centered on the physical characteristics of the groundwater basins and surface water sources; the states' rules and regulations governing water allocation and use; the structure and operation of the conjunctive management projects; the number, type, characteristics, and activities of the organizations involved in conjunctive management; and a series of performance measures for each organization and project.
Progress Summary:
From June 1, 1998 through May 30, 1999, most of the data collection using the coding forms was completed and entered into the database. This means that data collection and data entry for Arizona is complete, data collection and data entry for Colorado is 90 percent complete, and data collection for California is almost complete and data entry is underway. Furthermore, during this time period the data base was debugged and is now fully operational. We have begun preliminary analysis of the data.Findings from Arizona. In Arizona, conjunctive use activities have grown from a few small artificial groundwater recharge projects in the mid-1980s to 43 currently permitted direct and indirect recharge programs. Arizona's 1980 Groundwater Management Act (AGMA), which created five Active Management Areas (AMAs) to protect Arizona's groundwater supplies, and the state's 1986 recharge regulations that ensured credits to recharged water have encouraged the advent of conjunctive use in the state.
There is a wide variance in the type of conjunctive use projects and the extent of these projects within the state's AMAs. Of the 43 permitted projects in the state, 61 percent recharge Central Arizona Project water, 37 percent recharge effluent, and 5 percent recharge Salt and Verde River water. Most of the water has been stored for groundwater credits. Less than 5 percent of the water recharged in the state has been recovered for use.
Most of the artificial recharge activity in Arizona can be attributed to the state's indirect recharge projects, which typically involve irrigation districts purchasing incentive-priced Central Arizona Project water "in-lieu" of pumping groundwater. These facilities comprise 70 percent of the total acre-feet permitted for recharge in Arizona. In the Pinal AMA, more than 99 percent of the recharge to date is attributed to in-lieu projects.
The preliminary findings in Arizona begin to address a number of our research questions. The first is that cooperative organizational arrangements, facilitated by overlapping jurisdictions, appear to play a key role in the outcomes of projects. Secondly, large water projects do impact conjunctive use programs in Arizona, particularly when considering the extent of projects in Arizona that are "in-lieu."
Findings from California. Conjunctive management programs were being implemented in only 12 of 70 basins we sampled in California. The projects we found tended (with a couple of exceptions) to be in high-demand urban areas underlain by large groundwater basins. It appears that the benefits from conjunctive management in these areas are large enough to exceed the high costs of assembling and maintaining the interorganizational coordination needed to accomplish conjunctive management in California.
California's institutional arrangements provide protection of multiple interests, and virtually assure that no conjunctive water management programs will be implemented unless each of those multiple interests has been accommodated. Those institutional arrangements also contribute to a project-by-project, deal-by-deal approach to the development and implementation of conjunctive use programs.
California's complex approach with all of its protections for affected interests can have some substantial advantages. Conjunctive management programs that actually pass the gauntlet and are implemented exhibit noteworthy long-term stability. The stability of these programs has in many instances helped to keep their operating costs low and economic efficiency high.
The opportunity costs imposed by California's institutional arrangements may also be substantial. The barriers to initiating conjunctive use programs contribute to the underutilization of many hydrogeologically well-suited basins, over-reliance on surface storage facilities with their high financial and environmental costs, and avoidable overdrafting of groundwater supplies in several areas, which can produce lasting negative effects on underground storage capacity, water quality, and environmental values.
Findings from Colorado. Arizona-California types of conjunctive management projects, in which surplus surface water is placed in long-term storage underground, essentially do not exist in Colorado. Colorado's unique system of augmentation plans has arisen entirely because of institutional arrangements in that state. The prior appropriation doctrine governs surface water and groundwater that is tributary to surface water streams. Under the prior appropriation doctrine, water is allocated on the basis of first-in-time, first-in-right. During times when water supplies are insufficient to satisfy all users, senior appropriators (i.e., those who hold the oldest water rights) are satisfied first. In practice, what this means is that most surface water rights are senior to most tributary groundwater rights.
Since the 1950s, farmers have relied increasingly on tributary groundwater for irrigation. Beginning in the 1960s, conflict emerged between senior surface water users and junior groundwater users. Groundwater pumping was negatively affecting surface water flows. Farmers, however, did not want to shut down their wells during the height of the irrigation season in order to protect and satisfy the rights of senior water users. A number of institutional innovations emerged from this conflict, one of them being the augmentation plan. Strict application of the priority system would require junior users to shut down their water use entirely during periods of shortage. Augmentation plans allow junior water users to continue to appropriate water, even during times of scarcity, as long as they provide an amount of water equivalent to that which they are taking out of priority at the time and at the place needed by senior water users.
Augmentation plans in Colorado, which are a form of conjunctive management, represent a type that is precisely the opposite of conjunctive management in Arizona and California. In Colorado, conjunctive management is engaged in so as to maintain and even enhance surface water flows while allowing for groundwater pumping.
Future Activities:
Over the course of the upcoming year, the final year of the project, we will engage in the following activities. First, and most importantly, we will complete data entry and fill in the few missing pieces of information for several of the cases. Second, we will more thoroughly analyze the data.Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 11 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
water, drinking water, watershed, groundwater, public policy, decision making, survey, socioeconomic, conservation, environmental assets, sociological, social science, hydrology, surveys, western, Arizona, AZ, California, CA, Colorado, CO, Region 8, Region 9., RFA, Scientific Discipline, Geographic Area, Water, Water & Watershed, Hydrology, Ecology, State, Wet Weather Flows, Geology, Watersheds, water resources, canals, flood control, watershed, decision making, draught, surface water, conjunctive management, decision model, comparative institutional analysis, Arizona (AZ), aquatic ecosystems, public policy, California (CA), groundwater, conjunctive management practicesProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.