Peter Folger, Charles V. Stern, Nicole T. Carter, and Megan Stubbs have updated their fine July 2018 CRS report with this 22 May 2020 one: 'The Federal Role in Groundwater Supply'.
Lots of good graphics. Click on one to enlarge it.
From the publication:
Summary
Groundwater, the water in aquifers accessible by wells, is a critical component of the U.S. water supply. It is important for both domestic and agricultural water needs, among other uses. Nearly half of the nation’s population uses groundwater to meet daily needs; in 2015, about 149 million people (46% of the nation’s population) relied on groundwater for their domestic indoor and outdoor water supply. The greatest volume of groundwater used every day is for agriculture, specifically for irrigation. In 2015, irrigation accounted for 69% of the total fresh groundwater withdrawals in the United States. For that year, California pumped the most groundwater for irrigation, followed by Arkansas, Nebraska, Idaho, Texas, and Kansas, in that order. Groundwater also is used as a supply for mining, oil and gas development, industrial processes, livestock, and thermoelectric power, among other uses.
Congress generally has deferred management of U.S. groundwater resources to the states, and there is little indication that this practice will change. Congress, various states, and other stakeholders recently have focused on the potential for using surface water to recharge aquifers and the ability to recover stored groundwater when needed. Some see aquifer recharge, storage, and recovery as a replacement or complement to surface water reservoirs, and there is interest in how federal agencies can support these efforts. In the congressional context, there is interest in the potential for federal policies to facilitate state, local, and private groundwater management efforts (e.g., management of federal reservoir releases to allow for groundwater recharge by local utilities).
The two primary federal water resources agencies are the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). No significant federal restrictions apply to Reclamation’s authorities to deliver water for purposes of aquifer recharge, storage, and recovery. USACE authorities also do not restrict nonfederal entities from using water stored or released from USACE reservoirs for groundwater recharge. Both agencies acknowledge that some state restrictions affect the use of the delivered or stored waters for groundwater activities. Reclamation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also provide some forms of financial assistance that could be used for enhancing groundwater supplies.
Other federal agencies support activities that inform groundwater management. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey monitors and reports groundwater conditions across the country, develops groundwater models and software tools for characterizing aquifers, and provides long- and short- term forecasts of changing groundwater conditions as part of local and regional groundwater studies. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also make observations and collect data that are relevant to groundwater monitoring and assessment. USDA collects groundwater data related to irrigation.
Long-term changes to the climate affecting the United States, particularly rising temperatures and changes in the patterns, quantities, and type of precipitation (i.e., rain versus snow), could affect the availability of groundwater in the future. Other factors, such as changes to land use, irrigation practices, and patterns of water consumption, also may influence future changes to groundwater supplies.
Cutting to the chase...
Summary and Conclusions
Congress generally has deferred management of U.S. groundwater resources to the states, and that practice appears likely to continue. Severe and widespread droughts over the last 10 years in California, the Midwest, and Texas and a longer period of drier-than-normal conditions in the Southwest have contributed to increasing congressional attention to the effects of drought on increased groundwater pumping and the depletion of groundwater supplies. These events have led to congressional interest in policies that would support augmentation of water supplies by enhanced aquifer recharge and the ability to store groundwater in an aquifer for later recovery when surface water supplies are curtailed by drought. Existing authorities for Reclamation and USACE allow federal projects to be involved in aquifer recharge, storage, and recovery in some way. Reclamation, USDA, and EPA also provide some forms of financial assistance that could support aquifer recharge, storage, and recovery.
A connection between federal water projects and groundwater enhancement already exists in Arizona, as part of the Central Arizona Project, and activities are being implemented via state law. More recently, California enacted three groundwater laws known collectively as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which directed the California Department of Water Resources to identify water available for replenishing groundwater in the state. Because the water provided by the Central Valley Project is integral to the water supply and delivery infrastructure of the state,88 it is also recognized as part of the surface water resources potentially available for recharging aquifers as the SGMA is implemented.89 Other western states with significant Reclamation water infrastructure also may look to enhance their sources of water for aquifer recharge by tapping the federal projects.
Further technological developments in desalinating brackish or saline groundwater could help make those water supplies available for domestic, agricultural, or other uses.90 Congress authorized an assessment of brackish groundwater in Section 9507(c) of P.L. 111-11 in 2009, and USGS released its assessment report in 2017.91 In general, the assessment found that deeper wells had more brackish groundwater than shallower wells. Seventy percent of wells between 1,500 feet and 3,000 feet below the surface were brackish or highly saline, whereas less than 20% of wells 50 feet deep or shallower were brackish.
USGS reports that many water providers are turning to brackish groundwater to augment or replace freshwater for drinking and other uses, such as power generation, irrigation, aquaculture, and uses in the oil and gas industry (e.g., hydraulic fracturing).92 For greater use of this potential resource, more detailed evaluations of specific aquifers likely are required. Technological and economic analyses would be needed to determine if brackish groundwater, especially from the deeper wells, could be used economically on a greater scale in the future.
Enjoy!
A very nice article posted by Michael Campana who has done more serious work to put water on the net than any other human alive or dead.
I understand and agree with the assertions in the presentation as to the current and possible federal roles. However, I do have an alternate view.
Humanity has evolved around water - its role in all sectors is pervasive but taken for granted. As populations and per capita consumption grows, AND a changing climate portends increasing and persistent variability of extremes, it is inevitable that in many places reliance on renewable surface water and shallow groundwater sources will be stressed, and deep groundwater will emerge as a sovereign good or store that countries SHOULD want to protect, even if they dont really recognize that now. This is becoming evident to the Indian politicians nearly 20 years after I first started trying to make noise about it.
In any case, back to the good old USA. We have our own examples of the mounting importance of aging and failing infrastructure, including dams and levees, that we are not adequately investing in restoring and in many cases removing for good reasons. This highlights the importance of groundwater as a buffer for droughts. The rate and pace of groundwater depletion in certain pockets AND the pollution of groundwaters in others could become at least a regionally critical issue. Some states, e.g. Nebraska, Kansas, and Arizona, are ahead of others, e.g., California and Texas in starting to secure and control the local groundwater resource. Yet, as noted in the article I am responding to there is no national strategy and none in the offing.
We have efforts at national food security and national energy security. None for national water security or national climate security -- two that are inexorably related. We need to create a national water reserve, and the bulk of the national water reserve would come from deeper groundwater that is currently being mined. Of necessity, the national groundwater reserve would be spatially distributed and protected in quantity and quality. This would require a strategic federal initiative that the states may not like, but is a critical issue from a planning perspective. Based on paleoclimatic data there is a significant potential of continental scale droughts that may persist for a decade, unlike anything we saw in the past two centuries. We have no plan in place to deal with such a situation.
We have those on the left screaming climate change - a problem that needs to be addressed -- yet future scenarios are highly uncertain and distant -- and those on the right who are in a state of natural denial of what their opponents say. However, neither side should be able to dispute what we see in the US climate record of the last 700 or more years -- this is S that has happened and should be part of our planning and thinking.
This brings me back to groundwater. There is much talk of sustainability and resilience - wonderful concepts that are not always abstract. This is one of those cases, where if we did set up a national water reserve that was captured as a set of statewide distributed groundwater reservoirs with appropriate risk management principles that were agreed upon, we could look at a rosier future, sustainable and resilient -- at least for one piece of the pie that readers here care about.
Happy to engage in a discussion about how we do this, and to carry it as far as we need to. Without a doubt, some will scream FOOL! And if you do, I request that you characterize me at least as a Shakesperean fool! That will make me quite happy.
Posted by: Upmanu Lall | Thursday, 28 May 2020 at 10:21 AM