Economic tradeoff between domestic well impact and reduced agricultural production with groundwater drought management: Tulare County, California (USA), case study

Jay R Lund,Kathleen M Stone,Robert M Gailey

doi:10.1007/s10040-021-02409-w

Jay R Lund, Kathleen M Stone + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-021-02409-w

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Abstract

Formal policy analysis can aid resource management where groundwater is used intensively. Approaches for developing equitable and effective pumping allocations for drought are evaluated in the context of the 2012–2016 drought in Tulare County, California, USA. Potential economic impacts of policy alternatives on two user groups with conflicting interests are considered. Tradeoffs between losses of agricultural profit and response costs for domestic wells that run dry are estimated for various maximum groundwater depth policies. A welfare maximizing approach for identifying policies that limit depth to groundwater is evaluated and found to be ineffective because agricultural opportunity costs are much larger than domestic well costs. Adding a fee for additional drought groundwater pumping is proposed as a more impactful and balanced management policy approach. For the case study presented, a fee range of $300 to $600/acre-foot ($300–$600/1,233 m3) yielded an effective groundwater management policy for reducing domestic well impacts from drought and balancing agricultural impacts of drought with the need to replenish additional drought pumping in wetter years. Recent management policies enacted in the study area agree with this finding. These results may provide a useful perspective for analytically examining and developing groundwater management policies near the study area and elsewhere.

Highlights

Introduction and objectivesGroundwater resources are used intensively worldwide (Wada et al 2012; Döll et al 2014) and are often becoming degraded as a result (Foster and Chilton 2003)
Domestic well costs decrease because the depth to groundwater (DTGW) increase during drought is limited, which limits supply interruptions and accompanying costs from groundwater drawdown (Gailey et al 2019)
The total cost curves are highly influenced by the agricultural costs because of larger order of magnitude compared to domestic well costs

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and objectivesGroundwater resources are used intensively worldwide (Wada et al 2012; Döll et al 2014) and are often becoming degraded as a result (Foster and Chilton 2003). Global demand for many of California’s crops prompted increased groundwater pumping to replace surface-water shortfalls and sustain profitable crop production (Medellín-Azuara et al 2016; Gumidyala et al 2020). This substitution for irrigation supplies accelerated groundwater overdraft and a range of related problems (Moran et al 2014) that included domestic well failure (Gailey et al 2019) and land subsidence (Smith et al 2017)

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