Tuesday, October 14, 2008 : 9:00 a.m.
Desired Future Conditions for Texas Aquifers: A Statewide Review of the Ground Water Management Area Process
In 2005, the Texas State Legislature embarked on a statewide program to determine how much groundwater is available in the state based on a policy decision. Groundwater management areas statewide, composed of groundwater conservation districts, must develop a desired future condition for relevant aquifers by September 2010. A desired future condition can be generally described as what an aquifer might “look” like in the future, and might be defined by a percent volume decrease, water level decrease, or minimum spring flow. The desired future condition is then evaluated and a resulting “managed available groundwater” is determined, which is quantified over a 50-year period. This amount is the amount of groundwater that must be permitted by the district each year. Each of the sixteen groundwater management areas has a unique approach to this issue. Some are “mining” their aquifers, resulting in permanent loss of groundwater resources, while some wish to manage “sustainably.” The proposed desired future conditions range from an area having 50 percent of the aquifer left in 50 years to maximums of 10 feet of water level declines in an unconfined aquifer. Currently, the groundwater management areas do not have to plan in the same way or quantify their desired future condition the same for an aquifer spanning groundwater area boundaries. There are modifications to this process that may help improve this planning program, including giving the districts standard hydrogeologic data upon which to base their decisions, economic data to help understand economic impacts, simplified user interfaces for anyone to be able to use the complex groundwater models, and independently-determined stakeholder input on preferences for a desired future condition.
Rima Petrossian, Texas Water Development Board Rima is currently a fourth-year Ph.D.student in the LBJ School of Public Policy. She is focusing her research on groundwater management in Texas through the Groundwater Management Area (GMA) process. Rima currently supervises the Groundwater Technical Assistance section in Planning at the Texas Water Development Board in Austin, Texas. She is responsible for groundwater management plan approvals, supervising statewide groundwater technical assistance and providing technical and administrative support to groundwater management areas statewide.