Texas suffering long-term drought is struggling with legal issues as to ownership of water and how water can be conserved. The Texas Supreme Cou...

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Texas suffering long-term drought is struggling with legal issues as to ownership of water and how water can be conserved. The Texas Supreme Court rules that a landowner, if rights have not been sold or transferred, has right to water that can be pumped from wells on his property. Only limitations may be waste or subsistence or perhaps some other narrow grounds. With aquifers at very low points because of use and drought, state's ability and local groundwater conservation districts to restrict removal of water from aquifer may be limited. Some parties are now drilling into deep more saline aquifers and using desalination to provide water for people, industry, and for hydraulic fracturing in booming oil fields in West Texas. This may help reduce problems with fresh water aquifers, but desalination is expensive. Legal rights to groundwater are important in the US. How do these issues affect other countries?

1 Comment

  1. Dear Scott, in my country also (Bangladesh) there are no restriction on ground water pumping. And people are drilling the bore deeper day by day. We have certain rules but no one follows as there is no monitoring system for it.