HOW DO YOU PREFER YOUR AQUIFER: SHAKEN, STIRRED, OR SUSTAINABLE?

How do you prefer your aquifer: Shaken, stirred, or sustainable?

Ninety-five Texas groundwater conservation districts are more than halfway through a five-year long decision-making process started in 2005 that is a response to new groundwater management legislation. District board presidents are voting—for the first time—on a preference-based decision about how much groundwater is available for use. Texas Water Code Chapter 36 neither suggests nor requires prescribed methods directing the decision makers on how to arrive at the desired future condition of their aquifers. The spectrum of decision-making processes currently ranges widely among the 16 statewide groundwater management areas seeking to determine their aquifer's desired future conditions. In this process, the decision makers could use a variety of tools, meshing the interface between science, people, and policy, to help them to arrive at their best decision. These include: (1) filming and determining stakeholder preferences through targeted questions in interviews, (2) assembling technical information like hydrographs showing aquifer trends, (3) reviewing financial values and multipliers indicating the economic consequences of their decisions, (4) reviewing the results of stakeholders' contingent valuation surveys, (5) using computer software developed as a bridge to bring the complex technical groundwater availability models in user-friendly form to the decision-makers, and (6) holding facilitated public meetings to allow public review and input to the decision-making process. The test case, Groundwater Management Area 9, used several of these tools to arrive at their desired future conditions for several aquifers.