Groundwater and agriculture: a comparison of managing scarcity and droughts in France and California

By Josselin Rouillard

France and California face a common challenge of managing overdraft in intensively exploited aquifers. As of 2018, large areas of France and California have overexploited groundwater (see maps below). And both regions have passed landmark groundwater legislation, the Loi sur l’Eau et les Milieux Aquatiques (LEMA) of 2006 in France and the Groundwater Sustainable Management Act (SGMA) of 2014 in California. The LEMA and SGMA both aim to eliminate long-term imbalances between extraction and recharge in priority aquifers. They also both rely on multi-level governance where local stakeholders are given primary responsibilities to define and reach sustainable yield, but state action is possible if local managers do not implement adequate plans to reach sustainability.

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Early on, California established a permitting regime for surface water use in 1914, but it never extensively regulated groundwater extraction. The SGMA introduces for the first time local “Groundwater Sustainable Agencies” (GSA) which have extensive powers to implement more management actions in their Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSP), including for example local licensing schemes to regulate extraction.

Water extraction in France also was not strictly regulated historically. However, the 1992 Water Law included groundwater extraction in its national water licensing regime. Since then, the state has defined priority aquifers where it can enforce bans on drilling new wells. In addition, maximum extractable volume and allocations for each use category (public water supply, agriculture, industry, etc.) are to be defined. LEMA then requires the creation of “Organisme Unique de Gestion Collective” (OUGC) to allocate water among irrigators.
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