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Overdraft | |
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One thing that almost everyone involved with water supply from groundwater agrees with, including users, marketers and regulators alike, is that the volume of water pumped from an aquifer should not exceed the natural recharge of water into the aquifer. A notable exception to this rule is the huge Ogallala aquifer beneath the West Texas High Plains, which gets little in the way of recharge, although it provides about two-thirds of all the groundwater used in Texas.
Regional conflict
Each of sixteen regional water planning groups identifies water needs in its part of Texas, and proposes strategies to provide water to meet those needs. The regional water groups are completing their third round of water plans, and these sixteen regional plans will be put together by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) into the new state water plan.
Occasionally, a strategy proposed by one region will conflict with the plan of another region. A recent point of disagreement about groundwater is the pipeline from Bastrop County to the City of San Marcos, proposed by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA), and opposed by the Lower Colorado River Water Planning Group (Region K).
A meeting between representatives of Region K, South Central Regional Water Planning Group (Region L) and TWDB resulted in Region K's request that the GBRA Simsboro project be downgraded in the Region L plan from a "recommended" strategy to an "alternative" strategy. This request was refused by Region L, with the apparent approval of TWDB. As a compromise, the word "overdraft" was included in the project description.
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