Groundwater
Water held beneath the surface in aquifers, accessed by wells and governed by a separate regulatory regime from surface water in most states.
Groundwater rights are administered differently state to state — some apply prior appropriation, some use permitting regimes, some historically applied rules of capture. The variation is wide enough that a groundwater strategy that works in one state can be illegal one state over.
The trend across all of them is toward more restriction, driven by measurable aquifer decline. Depth-to-water records are the public evidence base for that trend and the earliest signal of where restriction is coming next.
Where this shows up in the data
See also
More in Hydrology & supply
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