Asserting that groundwater science and research “has fallen through the cracks” of federal funding and support, a panel of scientists who advise the president on science and technology has agreed to forward to the White House a report on the state of groundwater resources that emphasizes the need for increased federal support for groundwater research.

“Groundwater science has fallen through the cracks, and the federal government could help its reemergence,” said Steven Pacala, a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and who participated a presentation of the draft report—“Groundwater Security in the United States”—at a PCAST meeting held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 1, 2024.

Pacala, who is a professor of ecology at Princeton University and who was on the PCAST team that wrote the draft of the report that was voted on, told The Driller that while groundwater science is reemerging, “given the magnitude of the problem, it’s not proceeding as quickly as it needs to.”

“You can't really do hydrology of the surface without also doing hydrology of the subsurface,” said Pacala, who added that eventually the area of hydrology will encompass both surface water and groundwater. “In the near future, there won't be surface and groundwater hydrologists. They'll just be hydrologists,” he said.

Inez Fung, professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, who was also on the groundwater-report team, said groundwater supplies drinking water for about 50 percent of the U.S. population. Further still, about 70 percent of groundwater is used for agricultural irrigation—especially in the dry west grows where over 90 percent of fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown for the U.S. — which makes groundwater a crucial asset, Fung said.

“Because the states have primary responsibilities [for managing groundwater], the laws and regulations vary from state to state,” Fung said, who added that the existing “decentralized system allows the states to address specific challenges and opportunities within their jurisdiction.” Those challenges include geology, the climate, and the economics of an area, she said.

The variation in groundwater regulations from state–to-state has balkanized groundwater management and created situations where in some states “a landowner owns the groundwater under their land, and in other states, groundwater is a common property, it’s a common good,” said Fung. As a result of the decentralized system, “you cannot grow tomatoes in Florida,” she said.

To gain a whole-of-country picture of the nation’s groundwater resources, PCAST opened to receiving data from the public that was used in the report, and used to effectively model and predict changes in the inventory, the recharge, and the flow of groundwater in the context of the overall water cycle, according to PCAST.

In addition to the input from the public, the team “consulted with many, many experts, federal and state agencies and professionals, associations and others,” Fung said. That included collecting data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) which has tracked groundwater depletion from 1900 to 2008, she said. The USGS data shows that groundwater “pumping exceeds the recharge infiltration from snowmelt, (and) from precipitation,” she said.

“We are all familiar with the changing climate and precipitation patterns, and the increasing demand that further depletes the groundwater storage,” said Fung. USGS data shows that “much of the groundwater in the U.S. is fossil water,” which is water “from previous ice ages” and is “more than 100,000 years old and cannot be replenished naturally on human time scales,” she said.

Despite that fact, the report team did not include any recommendations on regulations in the document because the goal of the report was to identify how the federal government can help empower the states and local agencies that are responsible for groundwater management, Fung said.

Rather than offer regulatory recommendations, the report team worked on determining what further research needs to be conducted to safeguard water security and sustainability, as well as pinpointing potential incentives the federal government can provide to promote groundwater sustainable quantity, quality and efficiency, according to Fung.

Despite being approved by PCAST, the report is not yet complete for it needs to be proofread for spelling and grammar errors. When the proofreading is complete, it will be sent to the White House, and provided to groundwater stakeholders and decision-makers, Fung said.