Groundwater Governance in the U.S.

In fall 2012, the Water Resources Research Center and the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona initiated the project “Groundwater Governance in the U.S.” The effort aims to better understand the scope of groundwater governance across the United States today. As a first step, the project launched a national-scale survey of state agency officials in the U.S. The objective of the initial survey was to acquire baseline information regarding state-level groundwater governance practices. For the survey, a respondent was recruited from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The online survey, which was conducted between November 2012 and February 2013, was designed to take approximately 15 minutes. Agency officials were identified through online research and consulting members of the National Institutes of Water Resources, a network of federally-authorized water resource research institutes at universities across the U.S. This report presents major findings from the initial survey and focuses on analyzing survey results. Depending on available funding, future efforts will expand upon this research and include a broader set of survey participants.