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Is Nonrenewable Groundwater Management Inconsistent With IWRM?

Is Nonrenewable Groundwater Management Inconsistent With IWRM?. Session 3.4.2 – 5 th World Water Forum Istanbul, Turkey, 20 March 2009 Michael E. Campana (aquadoc@oregonstate.edu) Director, Institute for Water and Watersheds Professor of Geosciences Oregon State University , USA and

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Is Nonrenewable Groundwater Management Inconsistent With IWRM?

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  1. Is NonrenewableGroundwater Management Inconsistent With IWRM? Session 3.4.2 – 5th World Water Forum Istanbul, Turkey, 20 March 2009 Michael E. Campana (aquadoc@oregonstate.edu) Director, Institute for Water and Watersheds Professor of Geosciences Oregon State University , USA and National Ground Water Association (www.ngwa.org) American Water Resources Association (www.awra.org) ICIWaRM – International Center for Integrated WaRM

  2. Yes! No! No Opinion

  3. What Is Nonrenewable Groundwater? • Limited replenishment (recharge) • Limited replenishment, large • storage • Replenished, but over long time • scales • Water is being mined (extraction > • recharge) • ‘Decoupled’ from hydrological • cycle

  4. What Is Nonrenewable Groundwater? A Proposed ‘Definition’ “Nonrenewable groundwater is like pornography. I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” M. Campana (apologies to former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart)

  5. (Non) Management of Nonrenewable Groundwater – New Mexico, USA • In some USA states, NR GW can fall outside the realm of ‘renewable’ groundwater and elude regulation. • Case in point: state of New Mexico, where non-potable groundwater deeper than 800 m that is isolated from drinking water aquifers cannot be regulated by state water officials. • Developers want this water, which will have to be desalted. One estimate:18,500 km3! • Rush to pump this water (>370 MCM/year) before New Mexico decides to regulate it. Chaos?

  6. Management of Nonrenewable Groundwater: New Paradigm? Unitization “…government-mandated unitization of groundwater … is a solution to excessive access and drawdown … a single “unit operator” extracts from and develops the reservoir. All other parties share in the net returns as share holders.” – Gary Libecap (2005) http://www.u.arizona.edu/~libecapg/downloads/ TheProblemOfWater.pdf

  7. Management of Nonrenewable GroundwaterUnitization - More The unitization concept, borrowed from the reservoir (petroleum) engineering field, is currently being developed by Todd Jarvis and Gary Libecap for groundwater resources. Stay tuned!

  8. Unıtızatıon: Application to Nonrenewable Groundwater? • Maximize recovery and beneficial use of resource that is not “renewed” like other similar “mined” resources • May promote groundwater development on USA federal lands • Boundaries of groundwater compartments can be reasonably well-defined • Well interference issues and costs minimized • The real benefit is in the emerging use of ASR applications to “mined” aquifers – similar to secondary and tertiary oil recovery operations (courtesy of Todd Jarvis)

  9. Groundwater Unit Boundaries? Diagram courtesy of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

  10. My Take • Nonrenewable groundwater management is no moreinconsistent with IWRM than is renewable groundwater management. • Use of the catchment scale and sustainability requirement could preclude inclusion of nonrenewable groundwater in IWRM. • However, as water resources become further stressed by climate change, population growth, etc., nonrenewable groundwater will become more important as a water source, if only as a buffer or temporary supply. • Recommendation:We do need to consider NR GW as a component of IWRM and devise ways to manage it, preferably in conjunction with Aquifer Storage & Recovery and Artificial Recharge (ASR & AR).

  11. NGWA-OSU-UNESCO-World BankFirst International Conference on Nonrenewable Ground WaterPortland, Oregon, USA13-14 October 2008Summary available at:http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/files/nonrenewable_gw_conference_report_oct2008.pdfVery successful!Plans for 2nd Conference in 2010 or 2011

  12. More Information • Visit WaterWired blog and search on ‘nonrenewable groundwater’ or ‘desalination’ (NM case): aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired • This presentation will be posted onWaterWiredblog • UNESCO Publication, Series on Groundwater No. 10 (2006), edited by S. Foster and D. Loucks (see NR GW conference report for citation and URL) • World Bank Briefing Note No. 11 (2003), by S. Foster et al. (see NR GW conference report for citation and URL)

  13. More Information • Jarvis, W. Todd, 2006. Transboundary groundwater: geopolitical consequences, commons sense, and the law of the hidden sea. PhD dissertation, Oregon State University. Available at: http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/handle/1957/3122

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