Let’s start thinking about water!

Groundwater Plans in the United States—Regulatory Frameworks and Management Goals

San Marcos Springs bubbling up from the Edwards Aquifer at Spring Lake in San Marcos, Texas. Credit: Matthew Mohondro

Texas isn’t the only state that requires groundwater management plans—so do others. Gage and Milman surveyed the states to determine (1) which states require groundwater management plans and (2) which states require “concrete and measurable” sustainability goals. They then selected a sample of 54 plans from 11 states—including about a dozen plans from Texas—to analyze.

The paper is a little confusing because the authors misuse the word “yield,” which is a general term defining how much water can be produced from an aquifer. Around these parts, groundwater availability and modeled available groundwater are Texan for “yield.” The authors define yield correctly but then incorrectly restrict it to the sustainable pumping of groundwater via safe yield or sustainable yield. So, if you are surprised like I was to learn that groundwater management plans in Texas do not mandate a yield or consideration of various factors including water levels, quality, land subsidence, and surface water/groundwater interaction, do not be alarmed.

Climate Insights 2020—American Public Opinion on Climate Change and the Environment

Source: Krosnick, Jon A., and Bo MacInnis. 2020. Climate Insights 2020: Overall Trends. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. Credit: James Round.

By my half-butted calculations, there were about a dozen climate change bills filed this past session in the Texas Legislature, and a grand total of zero of them received a committee hearing. Clearly, a plurality of the Legislature does not believe climate change is an important issue for the state. But what do Texans believe?

In a joint report by Stanford University, Resources for the Future, and ReconMR, the collaborators survey and present results on what Americans—including Texans—think about climate change. Consistent with previous surveys, a super-majority of Texans (83%) believe global warming has been happening and has been caused by humans (77%). About 78% of Texans believe global warming will be a serious problem for the United States, but only 26% believe it to be personally important. Texans generally support tax breaks for renewables (83%), limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants (81%), limiting greenhouse gas emissions from businesses (76%), energy-efficient buildings (74%), more efficient appliance (69%), higher fuel economy standards (68%), tax breaks for clean coal (61%), national cap and trade for carbon (56%), and all-electric vehicles (54%). Most Texans do not support increased taxes on gasoline (41%), tax breaks to build nuclear power plants (36%), or increased taxes on electricity (27%).

Does the Primacy System Work? State Versus Federal Implementation of the Clean Water Act

Primacy refers to who has the primary enforcement and implementation authority in regulatory affairs. The default is for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assume the role of primacy in the implementation of the Clean Water Act, but states can choose, with federal approval, to take primacy for their jurisdictions. Texas is one of those states.

At a minimum, a state that assumes primacy must achieve the minimum standards set by federal regulation but can exceed those standards if they wish. Fowler and Birdsall take a look at the reporting of toxic releases as a preliminary proxy for how federal primacy and state primacy compare. They found that the transition in primacy resulted in fewer reported water-based toxic releases in Florida, about the same in Oklahoma and Texas, and more reports in Maine and South Dakota.