Sustainable Groundwater Management

This chapter briefly introduces the main policy developments from both France and Australia regarding groundwater management and their particular approach to setting caps, allocating rights and allowing reallocations. It then presents the objectives of the book and explores the book’s contributions under four key themes, namely groundwater and policy approaches in France and Australia, capping water use and defining sustainable abstraction limits, reducing entitlements to sustainable limits, and comparisons between France, Australia and other international groundwater developments.

This chapter describes the status of groundwater resources in France. French geology consists of a large variety of rock types, resulting in very different types of aquifers ranging from sedimentary basins, alluvial plains, limestone rocks, and crystalline rocks. Today, groundwater resources represent about 66% of Frances’s domestic water supply, 31% of industrial water supply and 37% of total water use in agriculture. According to the European Water Framework Directive, about 33% of groundwater bodies were considered in good chemical status, and 10% were considered in a bad quantitative status in 2013. The main quality issues for groundwater are related to diffuse contamination by agricultural practices (i.e. fertilizers and pesticides). France has not yet faced the extreme cases of aquifer depletion experienced in many other countries. However, associated groundwater dependant ecosystems can be affected by groundwater abstraction. The long term challenges for groundwater management in France are related to the decrease of recharge due to climate change, sea level rise along the coast, and future change in groundwater use. The identified adaptation strategies are (i) new groundwater management policies, (ii) the development of managed aquifer recharge, and (iii) active groundwater management.

According to 1804 French Civil Code, groundwater is considered as a private property. However, after this resource started to be intensively exploited by industries in the 1850’s, the State increasingly regulated its use. In 1935, a system of individual access and withdrawal rights, managed by the State, was established to protect deep confined aquifers which were showing signs of overexploitation. This system of use right was later on extended to unconfined shallow aquifers with the 1992 water law, mainly to protect the environment. A new management approach, based on individual volumetric entitlements, was then developed and tested in several French groundwater basins, subsequently obtaining a legal basis in the early 2000’s. The 2006 water law constitutes a clear break in French water policy. The system of individual volumetric entitlements managed by the State was cancelled and users asked to form Water Users’ Associations at the catchment level. Associations became the recipients of pooled water use entitlements, which they must share among their members using rules agreed collectively. Although this reform only applies to the agricultural sector, its represents a clear shift from a private to a common property regime.

In France, water resource management issues are addressed in the framework of blueprints which set out the strategic master plans for managing river basins (SDAGE). Master plans are then refined at local level (SAGE) in Local Plans jointly developed by stakeholders. This chapter describes how strategic Master Plans are formulated and implemented. It focuses on quantitative groundwater management issues and the legal and regulatory framework which defines planning objectives and practices. In addition, the chapter provides an historical analysis of 20 years of groundwater planning in the Adour-Garonne and Loire-Bretagne river basin districts, based on two of the authors’ personnal experience.

With an area of nearly 10,000 km², the Beauce aquifer is one of France’s major groundwater reservoirs. This unconfined aquifer is used for drinking water, industry and for irrigation. Following a succession of dry years in the 1990s, the water table significantly dropped achieving the lowest groundwater levels ever observed and drying up several groundwater dependent watercourses. This triggered the development of an innovative groundwater management scheme. Volumetric meters were installed in 1994 and volumetric quotas were allocated in 1998. Quotas are now adjusted depending on resource condition at the beginning of the year. Allocation rules have been validated by the Local Water Management Commission which represents all users and the State.

Groundwater is one of Australia’s most important natural resources and is the only source of water available for many regions, supplying urban areas, agriculture, industry and mining developments. The economic value to the economy is estimated to be $A34 billion. Groundwater also sustains ecosystems, through baseflow discharges to surface water and artesian spring discharges.

Groundwater is found in both sedimentary and fractured rock aquifers, with most groundwater extraction occurring from the higher yielding sedimentary aquifers including unconsolidated Quaternary alluvial sediments, consolidated sandstones and limestones in large sedimentary basins. Low salinity groundwater is generally found in higher rainfall areas around the southern coastal areas. In the arid interior, high evaporation results in salinities up to 100,000 mg/L. Deeper confined aquifers may contain older low salinity groundwaters recharged thousands of years ago.

Groundwater resources have been rapidly developed over the past 40 years. Current extraction is about 5000 GL/year with 70% used for irrigation whereas in France, 60% of the total extraction of 34,000 GL/year was used for public water supplies. Early management intervention has resulted in only 2% of Australia’s management areas being over-exploited.

Future challenges for groundwater management in Australia include potential impacts of climate change, impacts of mining and declining government funding.

The isolated British colonies in Australia formed strongly independent jurisdictions that initiated management of their own resources. The states’ power to manage water resources was enshrined in the Federal Constitution in 1900 and is still in operation today. This evolution of groundwater management in Australia contrasts with the French approach, whereby groundwater management approaches are determined at the national level. The colonies inherited the British riparian doctrine that gave landholders rights to water contiguous with and adjoining their land. In 1886, the state of Victoria enacted legislation that exclusively vested the right to the use of water in any watercourse in the state, and subordinated the rights of the individual. This approach forms the basis for the successful and efficient management of groundwater resources throughout Australia today. Two case studies present different approaches to the management and allocation of groundwater that are employed in Australian states, and how the level of entitlements is adjusted to meet sustainable extraction limits. Water reform efforts over the last two decades under federal frameworks and approaches are also discussed.

The Murray-Darling (MDB) Basin Plan is a strategic plan for the integrated and sustainable management of water resources, including groundwater. The MDB covers an area of more than 1 million km² across five states and territories in south-eastern Australia. The major proportion of the groundwater extraction occurs over relatively small areas of alluvial aquifers, while the rest of the land area is characterised by sparse extraction from a wide range of groundwater systems. The Basin Plan follows a 20 year period of water reform and a major drought. While there had been a cap on surface water diversions, it is only with the advent of the Basin Plan that a limit has been set on the level of groundwater extraction across the MDB. Consistent management arrangements have also been applied across the MDB. Within the regionalised limits on groundwater extraction in the Basin Plan, localised impacts on the groundwater resource (including water quality, baseflow and ecology) will be managed through water resource plans. These plans will be developed and implemented by the five states and territories and accredited by the MDBA. The groundwater elements of the Basin Plan will be fully implemented in mid-2019, with a review in 2026. Future challenges include compliance, and adapting to climate change.

Sustainable groundwater management relies on data to establish resource conditions and measure the effects of management intervention. As groundwater management grows in size and complexity so does the data needed to inform it, and the systems needed to manage this data. This chapter presents a discussion of groundwater information systems, their history, and examples of their application in France and Australia, including how these systems are used to inform and improve groundwater management. Examples are presented demonstrating the application of information systems in a range of agencies and legislative settings. These examples include systems used for local management, national data standardization, online data sharing, and environmental impact assessments. Finally, lessons learned and future developments are presented. This includes a comparison of the similarities and differences in the history and current state of groundwater management system development in each country.

Groundwater specialists strive to make groundwater issues visible. They face a dual challenge: first to develop knowledge on groundwater and secondly to share this knowledge with other stakeholders who should be included in knowledge development, groundwater management and protection policy. Questioning communication is all the more interesting as groundwater is a quasi-invisible resource. How groundwater and issues can be made more visible? In the field of sociology, with a pragmatist stance, our chapter questions how instruments frame interactions and represent groundwater. Indeed, the groundwater is made visible by tables, indicators, maps, photographs, videos, games, stories in newspaper and spokespersons such as hydrogeologists. Within a project funded by AFB (French Agency for Biodiversity), we reported on a number of communication approaches and activities implemented in 11 case studies in France. The inventory is based on web mining, grey literature review and interviews. The chapter develops a transversal analysis of the use of the instruments, and identifies assets and limits across the cases according to the following categories: public targeted; content, issues brought to the fore and normative stance adopted; type/format. Finally, concrete recommendations are made.

This chapter presents a review of methods an tools used in France to assess groundwater abstraction limits in unconfined aquifers. The experience gained from over 30 studies shows that the estimation of Maximum Permissible Volume (MPV) is complicated by numerous uncertainties. The first prerequisite is a good knowledge of the dynamics of the hydrosystems and abstraction volumes, but unfortunately this is rarely achieved. Moreover, both the calculation methods and modelling tools that aim to conceptualize these complex systems have limitations due to the simplifying assumptions required for their application. Technical recommendations are proposed for a proper assessment of such uncertainties. In many cases, the calculated maximum permissible volumes were much lower than the previously authorized volumes. Therefore, many of the results were contested by affected users. Such disputes concerned not only the economic consequences of reduced abstraction, but also the scientific basis of the studies in view of the known uncertainties and limitations. The last section of this chapter discusses this phase of negotiations, specifically based on examples from the Adour-Garonne water basin in southwest France.

This chapter describes the management of the deep aquifers in the Gironde Department of south-western France, which supply drinking water to the City of Bordeaux and almost all the1.5 million inhabitants of the Department from about 400 wells. These deep aquifers are a strategic resource for the Gironde area because of their accessibility and excellent water quality. Already in the 1950s, the risk of overexploitation of these resources was recognised, in particular for the Eocene aquifer whose groundwater levels showed a clear decline. The resulting awareness of this risk led to the implementation of specific regulations, before implementation of management policies as set down in the Law on Water of 1992. Major investigations were carried out to improve knowledge of the aquifers, monitor the groundwater levels, and develop ground-water flow models. The local stakeholders involved in aquifer management employed these modelling tools to create the principles and policies for controlling groundwater-abstraction. The current water management regime in the Gironde Department is the result of a long scientific and technical policy evolution, which has led to an operating process that supports consultation and regulation within the legal framework of a Water Development and Management Plan (SAGE in French).

The Tarn-et-Garonne department is crossed by three main rivers (Garonne, Tarn and Aveyron) whose alluvial plain covers an area of almost 1000 km². Since 1996, the “Direction Départementale des Territoires” (Gov. Administration at county level), with the technical help of the French geological survey (BRGM), initiated the development of a groundwater model and a decision support tool to define annual groundwater abstraction allocations. As the field data and the computing capacities increased and the law evolved, three versions of the groundwater model were successively developed to better assess the Maximum Permissible Volumes (MPV) of groundwater abstraction on a yearly basis. The last transient state version takes into account the annual fluctuations in groundwater recharge and the water exchanges between the aquifer and the rivers. The MPVs are calculated each year in 21 management zones outside of the previously defined riverside aquifer. These zones are now managed by five agricultural users’ associations, known as collective management agencies (or OUGCs). Further improvement should lead to the decision support tool being available online, to encourage OUGCs and farmers to be more proactive in managing the groundwater resource.

The establishment of a limit for extraction is a fundamental requirement for the long-term sustainable development of groundwater resources. As in many countries, the context and methodology for determining these limits in Australia has evolved over time. The instigation of the National Water Initiative (NWI) in 2004 was a major milestone in Australia which enabled the development of a nationally consistent framework for water management. A key component of this major reform process has been a commitment across the States and Territories to the concept of establishing a sustainable water extraction regime for each water system. National guidelines developed over the past decade have outlined a general approach to using scientific processes and techniques to determine this regime which minimises the risks to the resource and users that depend on it.

This chapter analyses the evolution of the use of ‘sustainable yield’ in Australian groundwater management and presents how four themes have come to shape a shared conceptual framework for groundwater management. These are: appreciating how the timing and location of extraction impacts on recharge and discharge processes; accepting that setting sustainability limits necessarily requires value judgements; employing a risk-based management approach that includes socio-economic considerations and greater stakeholder engagement; and using resource condition limits together with volumetric allocations to set optimal management rules.

The North West urban growth corridor (NWGC) is an important area accommodating Perth’s expanding population which is expected to increase by 50% to 3.5 million by 2050. Groundwater from a shallow Quaternary aquifer is the preferred source for the reticulated water supply provided by the Water Corporation (WC). Due to rising demands, the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) reviewed groundwater allocations in the area to provide increased security for environmental values related to wetlands and to manage the saltwater interface. Because of inadequacies in the regional numerical model in the NWGC area, DWER developed a spread sheet analytical model to calculate groundwater balances and discharge to the ocean. This assessment proposed lower allocations for users than derived by the model. After consultations with DWER, WC developed an analytical assessment using additional data and an alternative method. Instead of individual aquifer test results, the regional impacts of significant extraction from a wellfield over 15 years were used to develop a relationship between the aquifer’s response to pumping and transmissivity. This resulted in a larger estimate of throughflow which was more consistent with the original modelled estimates. These results were also confirmed by recently acquired drilling and aquifer testing data in the area.

Groundwater resources are of vital importance to the iconic Barossa Valley wine producing region in South Australia. This case study outlines a new approach to determining water entitlements for a revision of the Water Allocation Plan that regulates the use of groundwater. Resource managers have been engaging stakeholders in a discussion about resource condition limits in newly defined management areas. This approach is becoming more widely adopted and provides greater transparency in linking rates of groundwater extraction to unacceptable impacts on users, including the environment. In this instance, a numerical flow model has been used to estimate the likelihood that a certain level of pumping will result the condition of the system declining in coming decades beyond a certain state as measured by resource condition indicators such as water levels, groundwater discharge to streams and the ingress of higher salinity groundwater. In management areas where the resource is more vulnerable to short term changes in condition, a more responsive management regime is being developed where allocations can vary on an annual basis. This case study presents a useful prototype for more responsive and participatory management for other regions which face the uncertainties of climate change and increased demand due to economic pressures.

Reducing entitlements when groundwater is over-allocated in Australia has evidenced both challenges and successes. This chapter examines policy pathways for reducing entitlements when groundwater has been over-allocated. It explores the definitional challenges that initially hampered progress within Australia’s federated structure, before examining attempts to reduce over-allocation and over-use across Australia’s numerous groundwater allocation plans and catchments. The chapter highlights the challenges that led to slower than expected progress in addressing over-allocation and over-use, as well as highlighting some of the policy pathways that have been pursued to attain sustainable levels of groundwater extraction.

This chapter describes the groundwater management policy implemented in the Poitou marshes, a 100,000 ha wetland located on the Atlantic coast in Western France. Similarly to other French basins, irrigated agriculture has rapidly developed since the 1980s, mainly based on groundwater exploitation. Clear signs of groundwater overexploitation appeared in 1992–1995, with the intrusion of brackish water in the aquifer. Because of the overexploitation, ecosystems were severely affected and the French Government was sued by the European Commission for noncompliance with the Bird Directive (1999). The chapter describes the progressive implementation of a groundwater management policy aiming at ensuring the long-term sustainability of an emblematic groundwater dependent wetland. To do so, the State imposed a very significant reduction in historical water entitlements. This case study illustrates the difficulties encountered in implementing this reduction, in a context of extreme competition between economic uses (agriculture, urban and touristic) and environmental objectives. The case study also reports on the complexity of developing an integrated management plan in basins where groundwater, rivers, wetlands and canals are highly interdependent. It highlights the importance of a (shared) knowledge on water resource and uses, of involving stakeholders in the different steps, and of trying to share scarcity in an equitable way.

The Tintinara area is located in the Upper South East of SA and lies 200 km southeast of the capital city of Adelaide. An unconfined Quaternary Limestone aquifer lies at a shallow depth (< 5 m), provides high well yields (< 200 L/sec) and is extensively used for the irrigation of lucerne (alfalfa). In 2003, the first management plan introduced licences, a volumetric entitlement and required metering of extractions. The size of each entitlement was determined by the theoretical crop irrigation requirements (TCR) for the existing area of the range of crops irrigated by a variety of systems (flood, sprinkler, drip). A review the management plan in 2008 found that metered extractions had been reasonably consistent at about 15,000 ML/yr which is only about half of the volume that had been allocated to irrigate the same area of land. This large gap between usage and allocation will make future management responses difficult and ineffective. After extensive consultation with the affected irrigators, an allocation reduction program was initiated that minimised impacts on existing users and would be staged over several years so that irrigators had time to adjust their operations. This program included a review of the TCRs using more recent information.

This chapter explores the case study of the Lower Murrumbidgee Groundwater Management Area in New South Wales, Australia. In particular, it illustrates the contours of two policy approaches for water entitlement reduction: one was a failure (unilateral reductions imposed uniformly on all water users); and one was a success (financial compensation for cutbacks in entitlements, negotiated in the shadow of court action). The long-standing problem of over-allocation in the Lower Murrumbidgee was addressed initially through a process of entitlement reduction, driven by the government and involving a heated and contested policy approach. The primary method of reduction was an approximate 50% cut to all entitlements (regardless of capital commitments). This was challenged by a group of groundwater irrigators in the Land and Environment Court, who preferred to regulate pumping by managing the water level within a sustainable bandwidth. Although the case was unsuccessful, the judge raised concerns about the fairness of the new arrangements, and the irrigators planned an appeal. The litigation and threat of an appeal proved a catalyst for cooperation amongst groundwater users across the state, producing a policy shift that saw the government pursue a program known as Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Entitlements. This program recognised historical extraction in calculating entitlement reduction, and provided financial assistance to licence holders. Overall, this case study illustrates important lessons for policy approaches for reducing entitlements, not least the need to account for local knowledge and concerns, as well as providing adjustment mechanisms (e.g. economic compensation) to ensure the long-term sustainable management of groundwater.

Markets are designed to be an efficient policy mechanism to a deal with water scarcity, by enabling market participants to adjust their consumption in accordance with a flexible price signal. However, groundwater presents some challenges to the use of markets to achieve sustainable water use in that there are physical and policy constraints that may determine where markets operate. This chapter examines how the legal rights to use groundwater are managed throughout Australia through application of markets, the success or otherwise of this policy approach, and its capacity to adapt to future pressures on water availability as a consequence of climate change. We begin by outlining the principles underpinning groundwater markets across Australia. This includes key statistics, data and trends in relation to the history of groundwater trade. We then evaluate the experience of groundwater markets in practice, using Victoria as a case study in the Murray Darling Basin – this outlines how trade is administered by local authorities, possible influences on groundwater trade and markets, together with issues relating to physical connectivity between systems that can enable or stymie trade. We conclude by considering the future possibilities of markets as a tool for groundwater management.

Compliance and enforcement is a major issue for groundwater management. Yet it remains untheorised and underexamined. This chapter drills down into Australian compliance and enforcement efforts, which have been on a significant reform journey over the last two decades, oscillating between being an under resourced, low priority water reform task, to taking primacy within national and state water reform frameworks. The chapter begins by developing an analytical framework for studying groundwater compliance and enforcement. Using a case study of the state of New South Wales, the chapter examines the experiences of a government regulator and the compliance and enforcement experiences of water users. It concludes with a summary of challenges and policy implications for groundwater compliance and enforcement regimes.

This chapter examines the compliance and enforcement issues relating to groundwater policy in France. It is based on a review of existing grey and scientific literature and a series of interviews conducted by the authors with enforcement officers in 16 French counties. The chapter starts with a presentation of the existing regulations governing groundwater abstraction (Sect. 23.1), followed by a description of how the law enforcement agencies are organised (Sect. 23.2) and how they operate (Sect. 23.3). It then describes the infractions observed by regulators and analyses the factors that may explain compliance and non-compliance (Sect. 23.4). The problems that limit the effectiveness of enforcement are discussed.

Sustainable groundwater quantitative management does not only depend on implementing the right water policy instruments. It also relies on enabling sectoral policies that work in synergy with water policy objectives. To explore this link, this chapter presents the evolution of European agricultural policies, their level of support to irrigated farming, and consequences for groundwater abstraction in France. Three phases are identified. Until 1992, the French government encouraged the deployment of irrigated farming through price support mechanisms, market measures, subsidies for agricultural modernisation, and large scale supply infrastructure projects. The second phase, from 1992 and 2003, is a transitional period during which agricultural policies maintained an explicit support to irrigated farming, while the first agro-environmental schemes were established. The third and on-going phase (2003–2020) is associated with the progressive removal of direct payments for irrigated crops, while rural development funding offers mixed incentives. The chapter then presents current policy instruments contributing to reduce structural water deficits due to agricultural abstraction. To date, most projects to achieve groundwater quantitative targets focus on improvements in irrigation efficiency and the building of “compensatory” water storage schemes. To meet the challenges of climate change and increased scarcity, future initiatives should focus on water savings through the diversification of agricultural and food systems.

Groundwater has increasingly become a water supply source in Chile. In the future this trend is expected to grow as a consequence of the increased water use due to economic growth, together with population growth, urbanization, water contamination and pollution, as well as the projected climate change impacts. The Water Code of 1981, as well as previous water codes, were in essence designed for surface water and, thus, contained only few references to groundwater. This regulatory absence has been covered with groundwater guidelines established through internal administrative acts. As it stands, the legal and institutional context considers the required instruments and mechanisms to balance growing demand and the need to protect and preserve groundwater resources. This chapter investigates whether this framework has been effective to ensure that groundwater is managed sustainably, through the analysis of two cases located in an arid region of northern Chile: the Copiapó Valley and the Pampa del Tamarugal Aquifer.

California’s geography and Mediterranean, semi-arid climate has attracted both a burgeoning population and one of the largest irrigated agricultural developments in the world. Water resources are important to the livelihood of the state. With dry summers and highly variable annual winter precipitation, groundwater is a critical resource, drought buffer, and long-term storage reservoir for the state. Only during the most recent five-year drought, California adopted statutory control of groundwater resources: in 2014, the legislature passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The law is the most significant California water law reform since the legislature took statutory control of surface water rights in 1914 and of water quality in 1969. This chapter provides an overview of groundwater management during the state’s 150-year history, with often uncontrolled groundwater development, with conflict resolution and groundwater adjudications through the courts in some areas, and continued groundwater overdraft in others. Where courts have set limits on groundwater extraction, the objective has been to ensure stable and reliable groundwater level dynamics to avoid well outages, land subsidence, and seawater intrusion. Shortages are shared in sometimes complicated arrangements among overlying users and prior appropriators of groundwater. Under SGMA, groundwater management decisions will be made at the local level, with state oversight, to achieve long-term sustainability. We explore SGMA’s vision for sustainability, stakeholder engagement, technical-scientific assessment, planning, and infrastructure practices. We also describe the role of state enforcement as a key driver for successful implementation of local groundwater sustainability plans. Importantly, local groundwater management, for the first time, will also need to consider groundwater pumping effects on surface water, on groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and on water quality. Hence, key challenges facing local groundwater management agencies also arise from needing to address overlapping and potentially competing and less well-defined legal doctrines and federal and state laws pertaining surface water rights, ecosystems, and water quality.

This concluding chapter compares the important features of the groundwater policy and management approaches that have been implemented in France and Australia and draws lessons that may be relevant to other countries who are implementing groundwater management regimes. To support the comparison, the chapter looks at six main stages of the policy development process: (1) political awareness raising; (2) increasing the groundwater knowledge base; (3) defining and allocating water use rights; (4) defining sustainability objectives and setting extraction limits; (5) returning over-allocated and overused ground-water systems to sustainable levels of extraction; and (6) enforcement policies.