Groundwater Development Paths in the U.S. High Plains
Authors: Rimšaitė Renata , Brozović Nicholas 
Published: August 2023

The High Plains Aquifer is the largest aquifer in the United States and the major source of groundwater withdrawals in the region. Although regionally abundant, groundwater availability for agriculture and other uses is not uniform across the area. Three separate states comprising the most significant portion of the aquifer have distinct climate and hydrologic characteristics, water law systems, and institutional groundwater governance leading to different concerns about water policy issues across the area.

The northern, largest, and most saturated part of the High Plains Aquifer is located under Nebraska. The state has the largest irrigated area in the United States, most of which is groundwater irrigated. Nebraska is the home of the largest companies in the center pivot irrigation industry. Center pivot technology has had a fundamental role in expanding groundwater-fed irrigation. Nebraska is not free from groundwater depletion issues, but these issues are more important in central and south-central parts of the aquifer underlying large, primarily agricultural, lands of Kansas and Texas. The natural aquifer recharge is much lower in the south-central parts of the region, which has caused large groundwater extractions to have more significant water declines than in Nebraska.

In the United States, the greatest portion of water quantity management regulatory oversight is left to individual states and local government agencies. Each of the three states has a unique legal system, which highly influences the framework of groundwater management locally. In Nebraska, groundwater is governed following two doctrines: correlative and reasonable use, which, in times of water shortage, lead to a proportional reduction of everyone’s allocation. Kansas uses the prior appropriation doctrine to manage groundwater, which applies the seniority principle when there is scarcity in water availability, making junior water rights holders bear the greatest risk. The absolute ownership doctrine is used to govern groundwater in Texas, which allows landowners to drill wells on their property and extract as much water as needed.

Institutional groundwater governance in Nebraska is performed by the system of 23 locally elected Natural Resources Districts having full regulatory power to manage the state’s groundwater. The local governments use a variety of regulatory and incentive-based groundwater management tools to achieve local groundwater management goals. In Kansas, the Chief Engineer in the Kansas Department of Agriculture is in charge of water administration for the state. The Kansas legislature established five Groundwater Management Districts to address groundwater depletion issues, which can make policy recommendations but do not have the power to regulate. Groundwater Conservation Districts were created in Texas to provide protection from uncontrolled water mining in the state. The districts gained more power to regulate and enforce rules over time; however, significant groundwater depletion issues remain.

Multiple lessons have been learned across the region since the beginning of groundwater development. Some of these could be applied in other areas seeking to address negative consequences of groundwater use. Forward-looking perspectives about groundwater management in the region vary from strong government-led solutions in Nebraska to various producer-initiated innovative approaches in Kansas and Texas.