Pump Tax, Basin Equity Assessment and Sustainability in Groundwater Management: Orange County Water District Experience

The term “sustainable development” has become very popular among researchers, practitioners and policymakers since the 1980s. The sustainability concept is now applied in the field of groundwater management. Excessive groundwater pumping is taking place in many parts of the world and the means to achieve sustainable groundwater management has become an urgent need. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how to promote sustainable groundwater management, with a focus on Orange County Water District (OCWD), California, USA. OCWD faced excessive groundwater pumping in the 1920s. Since then, the district introduced various policies including a pump tax and basin equity assessment to tackle the problem, and continues to use groundwater as the primary supply. Investigation into the factors that enable OCWD to use groundwater continuously provides useful information to policymakers in other areas who are engaged in groundwater management. In addition, policy implications in terms of sustainability are drawn from OCWD’s groundwater management.