Associate Attorney Jakob Wiley recently co-authored an article titled “Groundwater Management: The Movement Toward Local, Community-Based, Voluntary Programs” in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy (Volume 29, Issue 1) available for download here. Jakob’s contribution provided the western United States’ examples and perspectives for the paper. The paper is a product of a panel discussion at the American Water Resources Association’s 2016 conference in Orlando, Florida presented by the authors.
The article investigates a general trend in groundwater management towards bottom-up, basin-scale, voluntary organizations. This trend contrasts with the traditional top-down, regulatory approach to manage groundwater depletion. The paper analyzes the “voluntariness” of several case studies across the United States, including Kansas’s “Local Enhanced Management Areas” (or LEMAs), the Texas’s Edwards Aquifer Authority, and innovative uses of intergovernmental agreements and water districts in Oregon, California, and Colorado.
Co-author John Peck is a recently retired Connell Teaching Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Kansas School of Law. Rick Illgner is a retired Groundwater Resources Specialist, working in Kansas and Texas. Constance Owen was formally an administrative law judge for the Division of Water Resources for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, but recently was appointed by the Kansas Senate as Chairperson of the Kansas Water Authority.
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