CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND INTEGRATING SCIENCE INTO GROUNDWATER POLICY

Conflicts between urban development, environmental concerns, and agricultural, municipal, and domestic users, arise when planning future aquifer use and development. To address these issues on a regional basis, the State of Texas State created 16 groundwater management areas and tasked them to develop desired future groundwater conditions. This research focuses on conflict resolution and making scientific information meaningful to decision makers. Representative stakeholders participated in narrative elicitation and analysis to identify commonalities of desired future conditions. To demonstrate the effects of various management/development decisions on groundwater resources to the stakeholders, a decision support system (DSS), using groundwater models and geographic information with performance measures, assessed groundwater withdrawal alternatives. Appraisal value, travel distance, and impervious cover data were input for alternatives to describe changes from a base case. We use CADRe, a DSS with a web-based graphic user interface, flexible system architecture, and application protocols for multi-model simulation, to help stakeholders understand how land-use changes affect land value, sprawl, critical springflows, and well yields through the performance measures. The final outcome preferred by each stakeholder was submitted to a pool of alternatives. These provided a basis for comparison that led to constructive dialogue among stakeholders. In the test case, we demonstrate how well placement and impervious cover restrictions both insure minimum springflows to the critical Barton Springs ecosystem and minimize failed wells during major droughts.