DO TEXAS GROUNDWATER CONSERVATION DISTRICTS MATTER

As of 2006, Texas was patchworked with 84 confirmed groundwater conservation districts covering just under 60 percent of the state, many covering only single counties. GCDs are authorized under Chapter 36 of the Texas Water Code to regulate groundwater production through “well spacing and production limits.”

This research attempts to address the effectiveness of the state's groundwater conservation districts by:

1) Determining whether or not groundwater districts impact depletion rates,

2) Determining exactly what it is that districts do that makes a difference, and,

3) Determining whether changing the state-wide appropriation regime could improve groundwater depletion rates.

Utilizing a panel data set of 8,110 “observation” wells compiled from TWDB data, the natural log of the average annual depth of groundwater is derived from water level measurements to represent the depletion rate and used as the dependent variable in a series of fixed effects equations.

For the first objective, I find evidence suggesting that GCDs do impact depletion rates, both beneficially or detrimentally. For the second objective, an expanded equation adding control variables for hydrologic factors, population, agricultural activity, oil and natural gas production, and water-use data to address the “mass balance” of aquifers are added. For policy evaluation, dummy variables representing the most prevalent forms of production regulations utilized by GCDs under Chapter 36 of the Water Code including spacing and density requirements, production limitations, and permit requirements are also added. Evidence suggests that some types of rules have beneficial impacts on depletion rates while others may actually exacerbate groundwater depletion. This fixed-effects equation is run on a state-wide basis and also by GMA and regional water planning group (RWPG). For the third objective, production regulation variables are replaced with those representing appropriation regimes utilized by the specific districts (i.e. rule of capture, correlative rights, reasonable use, or prior appropriation) to evaluate these regimes using data specific to Texas. Here we find that the reasonable use and the prior appropriation doctrines show to be the most beneficial to groundwater depletion rates.