 All right, I think I'm going to go ahead and get things started. Good morning and thank you for coming. I'm Sarah Mills I'm a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for local state and urban policy close-up Which is a research center based here at the Ford school This activity or this event today is part of our close-up in the classroom initiative It's an effort to more actively engage students in the research that we do in close-up This includes not just bringing students into our research projects as policy analysts But also thanks to a grant from the provost office developing two new undergraduate courses That allow us to bring our research into the classroom physically My colleague Deborah Horner taught a class in Michigan politics and policy in the fall where her students Incorporated data from our Michigan public policy survey into their projects and this event today is part of a class that I'm teaching right now titled energy and environmental policy Research which is teaching students how to develop and conduct policy research in these domains Drawing heavily from the work that we're doing in close-up Before I forget to mention it. I invite you all To come to see the students discuss their independent research projects two weeks from today in a classroom just across the hall The information is on the back of the program at that conference. You'll see What are what the students have been doing some of them have been using data from close-ups by annual energy policy surveys? Others are developing case studies on environmental policies in particular states Others are looking at how environmental technology Policy is framed in the media or in policy debates and still others are inventorying how The types of policies that local governments have in place for emerging issues such as food and waste policy As part of because this event is part of that class Really what I'm aiming to do today is to model how researchers use discussions with their colleagues Often at research conferences to help define their own work and then test ideas for new projects But in the spirit of close-up in the classroom This panel really isn't staged today today We're going to be discussing a project that we hope to scope out to become a close-up project One of the threads of research in close-up is the close-up fracking project in the past our activities have included public Opinion research on attitudes towards fracking as well as in-depth and comparative case studies looking at how states and local governments are regulating fracking Not just environmental policies that Related to fracking operations, but also tax policy This is the current focus of close-ups director Barry Raib And just last week my post-doc colleague one of my post-doc colleagues in close-up David Huell Received a grant from the government of Quebec to convene a panel at the Midwest Political Science Association To talk about how Canadian and US sub-federal fracking policies compare Anybody that does research though knows that sometimes your research ideas and collaborations come from odd places and This map last fall really caught my eye It's from Ceres a nonprofit that deals with sustainable investments and other business activities and Shows that much of the fracking and other oil and gas related activity around the country is taking place in Is taking place in areas that also have high water stress so the red colors are higher water stress To some extent I knew this but two things about this map really caught my eye one is about how much Active fracking basins cross-state boundaries. You can see those basins in white and as this is some as I've mentioned This is some work that we've been doing here at close-up comparing how different states Regulate fracking but another thing that really caught my eye was how much oil and gas development there was in the Great Plains Right atop the Ogallala aquifer, which is a resource that we know is under considerable stress from overuse This hasn't been something that close-up has studied before But I've been at an event a couple months earlier where I ran into Jenna Bednar a professor in political science And she mentioned her interest in wanting to stop her study governance in the Ogallala So this is in case you're not familiar with the the outlines of the Ogallala There it is and you can see if I go back to the other map that there's lots of overlap here Once I saw this map and shared it with bed with Jenna. She agreed that this seems like the perfect opportunity to scope out a new project So we have expertise in fracking policy Here at close-up and Jenna is interested in water governance But we didn't have much experience in the Great Plains and that is where Margaret comes in We found Margaret's work by combing through fracking and water Coming through the literature and her work really combines fracking and water policy specifically in Texas And so we invited her here today Honestly to better understand her research and to pick her brain and to help us scope out what this next close-up project might look like So with that I just I realized that you don't have the bios for them So I want to give a bio for each of the panelists and then step out of the way and let you guys talk about what you know Um so Margaret cook is finishing her PhD in civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin She has a dual master's degree in public affairs and environmental and water resource engineering and her research focuses on using policies Markets and technologies to alleviate the effects of water constraints on fuel extraction and energy generation She's looked at the potential for mitigation of water stress in Texas through collaboration on water conservation or reuse technologies Technology improvements between the energy sector and others She's also examined the potential effects of future drought and heat wave on power generation at thermoelectric power plants in Texas in the Midwest She has used her expertise at the Texas legislature the US Department of Energy Apache Corp Which is one of the fracking companies and Austin energy to inform for research Jenna Bednar is a professor of political science and the Edie and Goldenberg Endowed director of the Michigan in Washington program at the University of Michigan She's also a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute She studies how the interaction between legal systems and culture affects the ability of social system to withstand shocks and produce collective goods and Barry Rabe is the director of close-up and the J. Ira and Nikki Harris family professor of Public policy in the Ford school He's also a non resident senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institute and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration I've mentioned much of his research already on fracking But should also note that he recently served on the National Research Council Committee on risk management and governance issues in shale gas development So I've asked each of the panelists to spend just a few minutes Talking about their research, and then I'm going to turn it over to them really to engage in this discussion comparing and contrasting their work And then I there will be plenty of time to open it up for your questions to the panelists as well I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and I'm from Texas. So it's a really important place for me. It's home It's where I live now I'm from actually south Texas, which is one of the areas that blew up with the Shale boom that happened in the early 2000s and It's also a place. It's very prone to drought. Actually, most of Texas is very drought prone And on top of that we had this huge increase in hydraulic fracturing In combination with horizontal drilling and that's we already had oil and gas activity We were already used to that but then we added this hugely water-intensive technology to the system and It made all of these areas of Texas that were not previously economically viable Targets for oil and gas development. It made them now economically viable And they were places that weren't used to that oil and gas activity already They had maybe agricultural activity, but not oil and gas And then some of them were next to cities And so you have this new friction in areas that weren't used to this boom like the Permian Basin in West Texas It had it for you for decades before and so they're getting used to these changes and in many of these areas They already had agricultural water use. They already had some industrial water use power plants, whatever some municipal water use depending on the area So already competing sectors and many of them were already over withdrawing their their aquifers They're reminding them or over allocating the reverse and then you add oil and gas activity on top of that And so this last guy in oil and gas marginal water user on top of water stress on top of a huge one-year drought in 2011 followed by four years after that of more drought created this kind of Hurdle towards we have to do something about this water use and so that's kind of the motivation of my research But it's also the motivation of the 83rd and 84th legislative sessions where they the legislators came in in 2013 and 2015 To try to make changes to their water system And so that's part of my research part of the motivation for my research is what can we do in this water system to make sure that Oil and gas is not Hurting the people that that are in that area I mean the people that are selling their water to oil and gas activities the people that are getting money for their mining rights They're they're definitely getting a benefit, but then their neighbors next to them They might not be and so we don't want this social issue of People upset about water being depleted. We also don't want to shoot ourselves in the fight Even though we do like guns in Texas We also like our feet So so we want to make sure that we have water for the future And that's something that we have to plan for and a drought is usually when we plan in Texas unfortunately pray for rain then plan for it and And so that's how we we made that push towards water savings as a state But but they didn't get all the way there. And so some of my research is what else can we do? It's what are we doing? What can we do better? What changes need to be made on this system? And one of the particular things that that I think that we should push more towards in Texas is Water recycling so right now we have a permit by rule system that says if you're doing it, right? You can do it for water recycling, but there's no incentives for it And we have a lot of disposal walls so that's also an incentive to just truck the water and get rid of it and from a water system perspective if you're Disposing contaminated water you're getting rid of those contaminants. That's a really important thing But you're also taking water out of a system for the foreseeable future and that's not Not normal for that area. Usually water is moved set back to the river evaporates goes back somewhere else But it's also it means that it's not going to be economically used again And so if we could find ways to within the market for water that exists in the area Recycler water and be able to use it again That's something that I think that the legislature should do a better job of and so in in one of the papers that I wrote I looked at the policy framework because we have to know and understand that but then what else can we do to? Reduce our water use in energy reduce our water use in the other sectors recycle our water all of those different things So that's just one example of how we can be better as a state I think that's a good introduction All right so we had we had dinner I have to Confess we had dinner together last night and Barry and I Just basically spent the entire dinner grilling Margaret. She knows so much and we know so little And so that's what I encourage all of you to think about right now We're gonna say a few things but really we want to turn very quickly the spotlight back on to her because As I explained to her the us we in Michigan. We love our water, right? But we have a very different Relationship to water then Texas we are the I suppose I guess it's safe to say that the World's most Plentiful in terms of freshwater resources. We have it abundantly in Michigan And so we're blessed Texas is in a very different situation So I just want to you know, I'm a scholar federalism. I Think about federalism as a collective action problem my interests in water Management and water governance has to do with water resources that span boundaries political boundaries, which then become Governance challenges because it means that different political units need to Overcome their distinct interests to collaborate to manage the shared resource. So what I want to do is just give you quickly Kind of a framework for under for thinking about this type of problem and so then we might apply it to the kinds of water governance issues that Texas is facing and More generally this interesting challenge that comes with the water and energy nexus, right? So so the Ogallala which Sarah put a map up for those of you who aren't familiar with this. It's a massive Or water resource that's underground, right? So it spans from South Dakota down to Texas eight states in all Can tap into the Ogallala the in terms of volume the water in the Ogallala is Equivalent to Lake Erie and Lake Huron So it's it is truly massive and it is the primary resource for irrigated Agriculture in many of those states that touch the Ogallala. So it's tremendously important for Agriculture for the kinds of things that we eat every day like bread so But those states of those eight states their dependence on the Ogallala varies Widely depending of course on their natural rainfall and their surface water resources So where Wyoming and South Dakota have only Negligible withdrawals from the Ogallala Kansas and Texas are very heavy users of the Ogallala So we think of a resource like the Ogallala as a common pool resource that is it's a shared resource That's finite and depletable It's as The estimates are even though it's a massive resource the Ogallala is as I said being depleted and at Very fast rates so the estimates are that The lifespan of the Ogallala at current depletion rates is only decades. That is this is truly an urgent issue and if It's already having tremendous withdrawal rates and Depletion levels are already having significant effects and stresses on farmers in Kansas and Texas and and some extent in Oklahoma So requiring deeper and deeper as the water levels drop deeper and deeper pumps To withdraw that which are much more capital intensive And so what that does is it drives out the small-scale farmers who can't afford those larger pumps so It has this kind of perhaps not immediately Intuitive consequence as The levels are dropping so common pool resources create a collective action problem That is if the users could agree to limit their use This resource could be sustained So it's not hopeless That said Unless they agree collectively and in and are able to form some sort of credible commitment to that collective agreement Each one of them acting independently has an incentive To stick their straw and suck as much as possible as quickly as possible right to get it before the other users of the system get it so this for Political scientists, you know, it's it's a nasty problem for those who are using it, but it's a fascinating one for us as scientists so The Ogallala currently has no plan for common resource management across those eight states Some states and there are some local districts, which I hope we'll be able to talk about a little bit Are making some attempts but because this is a collective action problem because of the common pool resource nature of This aquifer unless the entire community commits to changing its behavior These independent actions actually will lead to what some of if you've studied the prisoner's dilemma the suckers pay off That is those who self-limit are shooting themselves in the foot So there in 2009 A political scientist Eleanor Ostrom at Indiana University won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work both theoretical and Empirical studying Successful management of these common pool resources one thing that emerged from her work, which is very surprising to people is that it doesn't require Say the federal government to step in and take over that is the users of these common pool sister of resources Can manage to form a collective agreement? She laid out a set of eight principles that are common Commonly seen in successful management practices. These include monitoring punishment things you might expect flexibility community participation in the rule setting congruence between local rules and between the rules and local conditions and First and most importantly a clearly defined boundary for this community so the The community of users must be clearly known to all who are participating and all be involved in the collective management management So in the case of an aquifer they could form an interstate compact This is something that's allowed under United States law that the states could Collectively agree upon a set of rules To manage this resource that that Congress could then okay, but they haven't done so there hasn't been an attempt There are some successful models something that we are all familiar with here in Michigan It's the Great Lakes Compact Tremendously successful. I believe Model that does fit quite well with Ostrom's Principles it was tested recently with the Waukesha Diversion and although that diversion was so to divert the Water resources outside of the basin only by about a mile and a half But even though that seems like a negligible diversion It was years in the making cost the city of Waukesha five million dollars just in generating proposals for this and over $200 million in costs to the city to comply with the terms that were eventually ironed out within the compact that is It is a well tested Compact it is likely to be successful in managing our resource There might be some similar Opportunities in the Ogallala. So as I close I just want to lay out some challenges with the Ogallala that we might think about With Barry's remarks on fracking and then as we turn things back over to Margaret. So first the varying stress levels are ground water Different from surface water in the sense that there are varying replenishment rates Nebraska very spongy Soils So the water in the sub basins within Nebraska is replaced much more quickly than they are in say Texas There's also a varying need for it, of course because of the differences in Rainfall and river systems but Those are the kinds of challenges that ought to be something that can be overcome by a well-worked out compact Another big problem though is the urgency that I mentioned earlier That we really are At a moment when by the end of this century we may not Farmers may not have use of the Ogallala waters and Overcoming this challenge is a political process and political processes involve lots of compromises and can be very very Slow and coming so we can't wait. We need to get moving on this Another one which we've been talking a little bit Sarah and Barry and I is interesting about the Ogallala It's different from say the Great Lakes is this is it's underground and so it's a hidden resource And I think there is something quite special about that in the sense that there might not be the same perception of This being a shared resource And so there might not be the same perception of a natural community And that affects the willingness of users to think about themselves as participants in this community, but then and and most significantly of course for this this panel is fracking So the question is does are these new? Energy opportunities and economic opportunities provided by fracking is that necessarily? Competitive with the other users of the Ogallala We would intuitively think so, but these two independently Have some ideas about ways that fracking activities could actually be helpful to sustainability Goals and so I'll let them explain for themselves the kinds of things that they've discovered in their own research But it is counterintuitive and very interesting I think so in some the Ogallala very tricky problem on its own and the question now will be With the water energy nexus. Will that be helpful or harmful to sustainable management of this resource? Thank you in some ways if you think of the decade prior to this There was enormous expectation that on a range of environmental issues Even in cases where in a federal system like the u.s. Or Canada there was not going to be new federal legislation or initiative first new steps That there was so much concern about a range of common pool issues That individual states had great incentive in growing capacity to address them And a growing likelihood consistent with some of what you were saying Jenna and Lenostrom's work That multiple states could and would come together and form if not formalized compacts Entities to deal with problems, especially that worked at a regional scale a Lot of academic work on this a lot of very active policy discussion Think about climate change We were meeting seven or eight years ago There would be 23 states including this one and four provinces linked in three regional cap and trade zones Today that has collapsed to ten states and two provinces Look at renewable energy in the Ogallala region there was a major initiative called powering the planes It brought together central plane states Provinces like Manitoba asking how can we come together and share resources and promote wind as a collective good And with it deal with any negative externalities that might emerge You might find a pulse for that organization on the web today But it's never really emerged into a sustained collective action collective collective action type entity and then when you think of shale Which has these interesting multi-state components to it and Operates in an area where neither federal jurisdiction in the US or Canada is particularly strong or likely to be so similar questions began to be raised at the very early stages of the shale boom and What would that mean could not only individual localities and or states Figure out what the right way was to be good environmental stewards whether that was water land use or anything else within their boundaries But could they join together particularly in this case that there had been a tradition some tradition of Oil and gas governance through an interstate compact the interstate oil and gas compact Commission Created many decades ago There was some strong expectation that River basins the Delaware River Basin Susquehanna River and the like might play a strong role and oversight and really bring states together more Substantially they do play a role, but it's largely limited and constrained and even in the efforts by the US federal government post deepwater horizon To reorganize the Interior Department inspection process and create what is now known as Bessie the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to rethink how we would do offshore oil drilling one of the key missions for that Bureau was to think about the relationship between federal and state Jurisdiction and in an area like the Gulf where you have multiple states including Texas playing a substantial role What a strong regional presence coordinated mechanism might look like? We now realize that that has struggled mightily not just on the federal park But stitching the cross-state aspects of this aside And so I think a challenge in this area is that often when we launch a multi-state initiative It's the Great Lake compacts of the world that are the exception They are really hard to launch under any circumstances But I think in many areas they are hard to see as durable examples of policy again The Great Lakes case is so interesting and so different in that regard you can launch something you can bring something together You can have a memorandum of understanding. You might even have a compact But to sustain that politically over a period of time Particularly or possibly with the special challenges in the energy and part for the reasons that you cite Jenna Possibly for others. It's really really hard to maintain and sustain that Among the challenges along with the the relative lack of visibility of some of these energy sources Are the fact that at least in the US context a great many states see Energy production and development as an issue of interstate competition rather than collaboration States for the most part are actively exploring how they can maximize drilling and production We have relatively few states that have put tight constraints or refused to go forward with drilling And that's not likely to change anytime soon We've seen a number of shifts and changes in how states Regulate and Dan Ramis here who's really looked very closely at these issues in a great many states And what that means for localities and we see some really mixed outcomes and results But thinking about getting ways to get in this case if our unit analysis of states to play collaboratively over time is really challenging in Part because what they're often arguing is they develop these resources whether they are Non-renewable resources like oil and gas or renewable ones like wind is that a primary driver for development is economic development? So in the case of portfolio standards and renewable energy development, whether it's the Algalala states or others the idea is if Partially related to environmental goals, but it's also homegrown jobs and Economic development and making the case that to go forward with that alternative That's really true in all of these Algalala states by the way whether they have a regulatory mandate a portfolio standard or not They are all big wind production states, but they've had a hard time sort of coordinating working across borders Really unique problems and challenges in this regard with Texas because of the unique nature of their grid and their unlimited ability to trade Electricity and move that we've seen real challenges in this area one area where I've had some interest in Asking is it possible to do it better way and don't expect any aha take away moments on this But is the fact that almost all of the states that engage in oil and gas development? Tax it and we all know the difficulties of imposing a tax on consumption of fossil fuels The challenging route toward any kind of a carbon price in any jurisdiction in the US It's more than nominal or even raising gas tax prices in a state like Michigan or the potential link to the benefits Of improved transportation or substantial. It's one of the hardest things to do politically Regardless of the partisan control of government at that particular time These energy extraction taxes are different. They are called severance taxes or production taxes They exist in virtually all states and they tend to have rather high rates in states We tend to think of as averse to taxation that are politically conservative States like Texas states like North Dakota have very high rates and strong Bipartisan buy-in and issues that we would not normally expect to see of course. There's a reason for that It's possible to export a lot of the cost because the ultimate costs or transfer of those taxes is Paid at the pump and in a great many states including Texas most of the oil and gas is being exported for use in another jurisdiction It's also been traditionally a way and certainly in states like Texas this goes back to the 19th century It is a way to often cover general revenues or earmark funds for a project like Education without having to impose more visible and controversial taxes on sales Property or income so if you go into a legislature in Austin or Bismarck North Dakota or some of these other states To even propose Cutting oil extraction taxes is the last thing you want to do politically because these are popular energy taxes And with that then does come the issue of what you do with all that revenue If we live in a society in a bunch of states that are going to continue to be producing oil and gas Into the near-term future which seems quite likely Well one is that there's going to be tremendous volatility and fluctuation in the revenue produced Because these are often linked to production and the price of oil or gas and we're clearly seeing that in many of these these Jurisdictions and for the most part states have not gone the direction of actually thinking about setting aside these funds longer term or Investing them in ways that they might try to reduce or address some of the negative Externalities that have emerged or are likely to emerge There are a few emerging possible exemptions to that in the Algalala region one that jumps out is Colorado Which is reformed at severance tax through statute eight times in the last 15 years in each case taking a portion of that money and putting it into water conservation energy transition Wastewater treatment or the light that raises all kinds of issues to them about whether you're becoming actually dependent on oil and gas Extraction to sustain the activity. We're seeing this in a few other jurisdictions as well But those are really the exceptions Those are really the anomalies most of the states that are producing this bounty continue to to really use it to suppress Other kinds of taxes to cover some core services Although with variation and exception So I do think that this is an area of a potential consideration and interest going forward and even in a state like Michigan This is a state that has history with this because my understanding is the first extraction tax past in North America was in this state and was focused on copper and Compromising and the first time this tax was applied in the US on trees was a state Michigan that was doing a lot of clear-cutting and so stumpage fees and that kind of Resource extraction has been part of the Michigan ethos and of course. We do have oil and gas extraction taxes All we don't do much production here Probably won't be going forward But they are small sources and pieces of the puzzle interesting in that they are a way to sort of link Potentially the impacts are drilling Through through some kind of a cost and pricing mechanism here mindful and Margaret I'd be welcome your thoughts on this where the whole question of using economic tools and Pricing and fees on any kind of water production preparation Transition is wrought with political and ethical considerations and yet continually comes up into the conversation Do we put a price on carbon? Do we put a price on extraction? What do we even mean when we put a price on water and think about that as something that might leverage better public policy going forward? Or do we take that off the table because the politics and ethics of doing that are just too challenging So those are a few additional thoughts and wanted to turn it back to you before I think we open up the question to see if you wanted to respond anything that Jen or I had to say sure So putting a price on water and There are a lot of ethics challenges with that just because we need water to live We don't want to make it unaffordable for the people that need it And so that's that's the base level of we need to provide it But on top of that we have this Access water that's not just you know the supporting life amount of water that we often Sell and we sell it to municipalities and we have to buy it for municipalities to be able to drink it So that's one example, but ag gets water energy gets water power plants oil and gas Industry gets water and at some point somebody's gonna pay for it So there is a price on water and it changes based on who owns that water So in Texas for example because that's where I've studied The ownership of water changes how we're gonna pay for it And so we have a surface water system where we've allocated water rights And we have junior water rights holders that just got their water right recently versus the older water rights holders that have had it for a century or something like that and They have a lot of power over the junior water rights holders if there's a drought The senior water right holders are the ones that are gonna get their water the junior water right holders are not And they might be the ones that go to the senior water right holder and say can I have your excess water? I will pay you a certain amount of money to get it And so then we set a price for water based on scarcity And we set another price on water based on just the marginal water user if we have all of the water rights Allocated which we do in most of our rivers in Texas Then oil and gas comes in and they need water. They're gonna pay a marginal price for it It's gonna be significantly higher than what those other water users pay It's another scarcity price and That's just surface water in Texas our groundwater is owned by the landowner and Limited where there are groundwater conservation and Groundwater conservation districts in Texas. They're small regional governing authorities that can set spacing withdrawal limits monitoring policies Like you mentioned, it's a best practice that I would suggest to them But not all of them do it But anyway, they can set those policies on water withdrawal and that can limit the amount that the ground that the landowners will withdraw But not significantly enough that they don't sell it to other operations And so there's a lot of water sale to oil and gas activities Especially in south and west Texas where their water scarce for service water And so there are prices on water associated with that and they're often lower if they're huge water contracts and For the smaller amounts that are trucked into areas. They'll have much higher prices And so we do set a price on water and because we set this price on water We can influence that market in other ways and so there might be policy mechanisms that we could put into place or just water management situations that we can influence Where oil and gas activity it exists in Texas. It's going to exist in Texas agricultural activity exists in Texas It's going to exist in Texas, but it doesn't need to compete for water necessarily. They could work together where oil and gas Pays for water conservation efforts that agriculture cannot afford They just don't make the kind of money that oil and gas does and a capital investment for that water Could be also a management technique for the future so that they're using that same amount of water now But in the future there's less water being used and so that's something that they can keep in mind with The the competition that exists for water now could be more of a collaboration for water in the future So that's one of the things that we've we've studied in Texas in particular and in areas where there's not a policy Framework for water rights for water limitations outside of the groundwater conservation districts in particular So in areas of the Ogallala and other aquifers in Texas where there's not a limiting authority there There's not an incentive to conserve So you have that water price that exists, but it's really just an incentive to sell water It's not an incentive to reduce so I'm I stay under the cap that exists from the limiting authority And I can sell water and farm. I'm gonna farm and sell water and just use more of it in those areas So that's one of the problems that exists and in that and some of our aquifers in Texas is we do have groundwater Conservation districts some of them are limiting the amount of water. That's withdrawn in that area Some of them aren't doing it as well as they could And and some of them there's just no groundwater conservation district in the first place So they're just not limiting it at all and we have this patchwork quilt of regulation That's very confusing in some cases and means that we aren't necessarily managing our groundwater in particular as well as we could So that's one example of pricing and management in Texas that will influence the Ogallala in particular Here are one mechanism by which there can be limits place that help conserve that resource But some of your research has also looked at the act the activities of in or the decisions of individual actors of individual landowners outside of the context of groundwater conservation districts that have By their own initiative then place limits on that I wonder if you could Describe that for the audience and then talk a little bit about What whether that's changed norms in industry what opportunities might exist? for scaling that up whether there's an opportunity for policy to Support those kind of good behaviors of individual actors and then Jenna may be jumping on that to how your collective management work might inform that Sure, so landowners by nature with the rule of capture giving them Ownership of the groundwater under their lands have a lot of power over how that water is used So if I'm an oil and gas company and I come in and I would like to use the mining water rights I will probably also ask to use the groundwater rights and that contract that I negotiate and A landowner can say yes, you can use my groundwater and you will only use my groundwater you will not go outside of this lease to bring water onto it onto it and You can't recycle it and you're going to pay me for that water too And they can put that in that contract and and that means that there's going to be extra Extraction of water in that area and that's not great From my perspective. It's great for me for the landowner because they're making money but They can also On the other side of the spectrum say you're going to recycle the water that you use in my property You're going to use only the brackish water under my my land And you're you're still going to pay me for it And so they could get a competitive price for brackish water that they would get for the fresh water but they're also saving the fresh water that's under their land and They're recycling water on the property as well And so there's a an example of that existing in Erion County where if you went in on Google Maps you can zoom in and you can actually see the Treatment facility. It's big circles on the ground there So it's pretty cool looking if you like that kind of thing that we're disgusting if you don't It's brown water anyway But it it's neat because this landowner used his Particular power because he had a huge swath of land in that county where the company did want to you to access that oil and gas and it wasn't economically infeasible for them to recycle the water and The brackish water price was competitive to what they were paying for fresh water and Oil gas companies can use brackish water. There's no reason that they can't their frack fluids are able to use salty water We've innovated enough in that industry that we can recycle and reuse Water that we wouldn't want to drink So there's not a reason that we need to be competing for fresh water as much as we are We have the ability to do this and and so the companies Have innovated in that direction, but if they don't have to or if the landowner is like the first situation Not letting them do it then we have a problem there And so one way that policy can come in is to prohibit that ability to limit the contract But it's questionable whether they can do that because groundwater is a private property right in Texas They would be inhibiting the landowners right to sell their water Except that they're also inhibiting inhibiting other landowners ability to sell their water on that contract to so that's something that The legislature needs to investigate more Is whether they're able to influence that contract design to be able to to encourage more of The outside water use the water recycling things like that basically don't prohibit recycling as an example of that Do you have any additions? Well, I maybe I'll just say something as a way of encouraging you to tell us a little bit more So, you know water again something is so tricky bad as it flows as a resource that doesn't stay put and So as one person draws more will flow in so it creates these negative externalities on for other potential users but one thing that is a possibility in the Ogallala if if it's not possible to get the eight states to form some sort of Collaborative compact as as we have with the Great Lakes compact, which is also by the way eight states the there may be sub basins within the Ogallala that are well defined enough that you You might be able to create a smaller scale of community This was up until the moment that Lynn Ostrom passed away She was consumed with thinking about the scalability of these common pool resource practices With monitoring in particular being much easier between users who know one another as you take it up in level It's not just the complexity of the interest which of course is true But there's just the anonymity that for some reason creates these barriers if we can bring it down to a smaller scale then there there may be ways of Creating these more localized successful management practices I am totally fired up about this idea of separating out fresh water from brackish water for example and so it would be interesting to look for example in Texas at the The underground landscape if you will of the Ovalala and see if there are these pockets that might lend themselves to Being imperfect but better communities of management that we have now So I don't know to what extent You know we see it would be interesting to look to see where we have these groundwater Management districts arising do they to any extent correspond with these natural sub basins within the Ovalala I don't know the answer to that either So there are three major in the Panhandle Panhandle of Texas So I don't know if you're familiar with Texas, but I stole your Michigan hand, and I have made a Texas hand So we have a panhandle sticking out on top and the basically covering that entire panhandle are Almost the entire panhandle are three huge groundwater conservation districts that were some of the first created and they were created because Agricultural water use is really important that in that area and in the 1950s We had a huge drought in Texas that spanned almost a decade And we were concerned about both surface water and groundwater and so in particular in that area They wanted to manage it better and they developed these three areas and then on top of that we've added 95 more Much smaller districts some of those in the southern part of the Ovalala so I would say the northern part of the Ovalala is more hydrologically aligned to theographer whereas the southern part in Texas, so it's all southern But anyway, the northern part of Texas the southern most part of the Ovalala in Texas is more county-sized Groundwater conservation districts are not really hydrologically aligned so those would have to work together between the different districts whereas the And they do that already in the groundwater management areas of Texas, but They would have to have a more groundwater conservation districts involved. I mentioned groundwater management areas there Groundwater conservation districts do not cover the entire state of Texas and They can set limitations on withdrawal. They won't they don't do it for Certain types of wells like domestic wells or rigged supply wells for oil and gas But for the most part if you've got a large wall on the property for some type of farming activity Then you're going to be regulated by your groundwater conservation district district if it exists But there are places that don't have groundwater conservation districts and they still have to plan for their groundwater supplies in Our water planning cycle that occurs every five years in Texas And so we have groundwater management areas that cover the entire state of Texas so that those areas that don't have a district are still sort of Governed there's still something kind of planning for them And so that also means that all of the groundwater conservation districts that are small districts in a big area Are also required every year to meet together to plan for the future of their aquifer And so that would be one example of this type of Bigger regional authority that we could use as an example of the community working together. So you have What is the difference between these small ground groundwater conservation districts? Where everybody probably knows each other or knows of each other and they definitely know who's hogging all the water Because there's definitely gossip going around about that But they have the small groundwater conservation districts and then they have the larger groundwater management areas and how well are those working To get those groundwater conservation districts together to plan for that supply for the future And is that actually affecting the water supply in that area? And I I don't know enough about those groundwater management areas and how successful they are at limiting the amount of water that's being withdrawn, but I do know that they are Responsible to the planning process now and that means that we're actually using numbers that exist and not numbers We appreciate and would like to exist To plan for our water in the future and that will change how we manage it I'd like to follow that and actually build on your question from Lynn Ostrom Jenna And that is do they know one another and one question I've had in cases like this Across states say in the Oklahoma and it's given the fact that most of these states Have very small governing capacities. They're part-time legislators in some cases legislators are not allowed to have any financial support To leave the state and go to conferences They have very thin agencies for some of you who heard Reardon frost from American University present his comparative ranking of the American states as he go efficiency index The states of the Ogallala rank almost exclusively not Texas But almost all the others toward the very very bottom in terms of capacity performance on a range of environmental issues So this question of how even in the case of these sub basins Representatives of different states would begin this kind of a conversation is a Challenging one from my perspective, and I don't know that it's going to change anytime soon And yet it's intriguing to hear what you're saying about the Texas case with these local districts and presumably local water Professionals who are engaging in this and I've been struck in some other work that I've done in Texas to find how how deep these Networks are and in some cases there are streams of funding to the staff local agencies to build these networks and connections Can you say more about how these? Districts are funded and staff and in your experience whether this work ever kind of crosses over into neighboring states and jurisdictions and has a Kind of cross-state component to it and here I offer that because in my experience Working with the National Academy review of the offshore drilling work We just could not find any sense that states were working in conversing at all about about contingency planning Even after the Deepwater Horizon Incident, so I'm really curious your thoughts on The how that might come together using Texas is an example and perhaps one of the more likely states in this region to even think about staffing these pieces Sure, so ground water conservation districts are Funded in a lot of different ways in I wish I had the map that showed the different ways that they're funded But they might have fees that they assess on water withdrawals They might have taxes they assess to the entire area that the ground water conservation district is in That means that the landowners and the other people that do not own land in the area are still paying taxes depending on how it's Assessed if it's on property then it's still just the landowners So it really depends on the ground water conservation district and some are severely underfunded and so they're The ones that are probably not monitoring the water that's coming out The better funded the ground water conservation district is the more research They're doing about the water supply in their area the more work they're trying to do to manage that water So it really is closely tied to the amount of work that they can do and so there's a ground water conservation district Outside of Austin that's particularly well funded and just that shining example of this ground water conservation district that goes to the legislature and and advocates for ground water Management, but they're also right outside of Austin, which is where the legislature is and They have the Barton Springs, which is kind of a treasure of that area So it really depends on the district and finding those examples of the ones that are actually trying to manage their water well and do the research for it and Have staff that are able to to go to the legislature and advocate for that ground water conservation district Those are the ones to target for this is an example of what to do As far as collaborating with neighbors neighboring states, I'm not aware of any collaboration I know that we tend to sue other states for their water I So I There's a little bit of collaboration between New Mexico and Texas especially in West Texas there's not a lot of water to collaborate over and some of So we have an agreement with them to give us water from the Elephant View reservoir and They do that except that their groundwater wells and the southern part of New Mexico are inhibiting flow into the Rio Grande's and The the flow into that reservoir meaning we're not getting as much water as we were supposed to get and now that case is in the Supreme Court so Where we do have agreements with those states that also tends to lead to Disagreements with those states because we're not getting enough water from them, especially since we're a downstream of everyone else where there is something going on Same with it's not groundwater, but the Red River in the northern part of Texas. There was just a Supreme Court case over Water that that Terant Regional Water district wanted to get from Oklahoma and they were trying to purchase that water. You're buying it. They weren't trying to steal it but Oklahoma put out a bill and their legislature said no, we will not sell water to other states and and Texas said well, we deserve this water because we have this compact We need a quarter of the water in this whole river basin and the Supreme Court said no if you deserve that water You wouldn't be paying for it So so we're we're on the blunt end of some water situations and often tend to use the The law to try to get it on our side, but that doesn't always work So Texas might With those situations in mind with New Mexico with Oklahoma and we also have water debt issues with Mexico as well Because we have a border river with them Might inhibit participation of Texas in a compact so it would have to be in their interest to participate like Somehow if there was limitation across across the entire aquifer it would secure water for our future Which is generally the idea of that compact But there would have to be some type of economic incentive for them to be interested in that and I think that's important For Texas as a player in that system probably for the other states as well Before I open it up. Are there any other observations or discussion between you that You want to make sure we get in before we open it up for Q&A. I wanted to make one tiny point just because Margaret Mentioned this earlier, but for those of you who aren't You know, maybe this is your first exposure to water law Water law is It doesn't treat water the same if it's surface water versus groundwater it doesn't treat it as a system and so in Texas the same water because remember flows can bubble to the surface and Be governed by one set of actually quite well-regulated set of rules and then dip under the surface and be Unregulated entirely. It's the same water, right? So there is something kind of messed up with the way that the law manages water resources and I think that this makes These compacts whether they're very local or interstate even more important I think that's one reason why the New Mexico take New Mexico case is interesting though is The problem is that there's groundwater wells that they've permitted in the state that are withdrawing Just a heck of a lot of water that are affecting the surface water supplies and in Mexico's cases is groundwater It's not surface water and Texas's cases. It's affecting our water supplies And so Texas has to admit groundwater and surface water are connected even though they don't do that in their own policy So that's a pretty interesting Part of that and here would only add on This is a complication not just of states and localities but a federal law and federal policy as Is true in so many areas, but acutely so in water We've had so little new statutory development or revision of existing statues For just one looks at the relatively simple straightforward question of assuming authority for permitting to states and The 40 year divide now or only two states have that authority one is Michigan and the other New Jersey related to wetlands Independent of the courts, but reflecting a fundamental disagreement between the US EPA and the US Army Corps of engineers Both of whom look at different statutes and see different things for exactly the same water body So EPA looks at a clean water act and an almost incomprehensible set of paragraphs in there about their jurisdiction Aha, we have the authority and a CE counters and says no if we look at the Rivers and Harbors Act going back to the late 19th century We see the same thing and the battles just continue to rage So this is a this is a perennial issue, but it kind of crosses levels of government And I'm not sure anyone has particularly cracked this problem And hence it devolves to states and localities perhaps in a good way with opportunities here But because of an inability to design an effective policy regime for a long long time In almost every area of water