Wildcatting for Water: Unitization of Megawatersheds, Transboundary Aquifers, and Non-Renewable Groundwater

Excessive access and drawdown in petroleum “reservoirs” has led to premature depletion and, in some cases, irreversible damage to the storage characteristics of reservoirs.  In the case of oil and gas reservoirs, government-mandated “unitization”, or the single ownership and management, of the oil and gas reservoirs is one solution to the problem of access and related drawdown to the common pool resources. Economists and legal scholars in property rights suggest unitizing some situations associated with groundwater development as one means to mitigate the inefficiency of a possession or use-based system of groundwater along with the inefficiencies associated with joint access to groundwater.   The post-modern hydrologic balance developed by Stephen Ragone, Ph.D. indicates other opportunities for unitization ranging from situations associated with managed recharge, remediating contaminated water, and ecosystem services.  Other known applications of unitization concepts extend to the spirituality of water. Unitization concepts for groundwater focus on “container, conflict, community, and cash”. Groundwater allocations traditionally focus on the aquifer storing water.  By designating a single “unit operator” who extracts from and develops the aquifer with other parties sharing in the net returns as shareholders, damage to the “container” by overpumping can be minimized.  Conflict can be averted by “blurring the various boundaries”, creating a new community of users.  Most groundwater users develop the water to make a living - cash payments make everyone whole. With megawatersheds serving as a new exploration paradigm, unitization early in the exploration and development phase may serve as one approach to eliminating the “race to the pump” and directs extraction toward maximization of the economic value of the groundwater system, rather than trying to meet the unreachable star of maintaining the “sustainable” or “sovereign” water rights held by individual parties and jurisdictions within a megawatershed, transboundary aquifer, or non-renewable groundwater situations.