The Delaware River Basin ...

The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) in USA is a watershed management commission formed by treaty between the federal government and 4 states and it has authority for issuing permit to large water users.  For a sub-urban region within of the large watershed where groundwater is the major source of public and private water supply, excessive ground-water withdrawals have had degrading effects on water availability, and indirectly water quality.  It calls this area the South-Eastern Pennsylvania Ground-water Management Area (SEPGWMA).  I am attaching a paper of mine which refers to this scheme.

DRBC developed a hydrologic based governance approach that integrates surface-water and ground-water systems--hard to imagine otherwise, right?  which works well for managing ground-water in relation to surface water basin and sub-basin scales.  This approach incorporates the trans-political issues in governance and ties in with natural flow system boundaries.  What is most commendable about the approach is it is workable at the regional scale and the small municipal scale; it is based on significant scales and dismissive of de minimis issues; it is built on a framework of understanding local hydrogeological and hydrologic conditions and land-use knowledge.

In my attached publication I demonstrate how the flexibility in the scheme made it possible to objectively refine constraints on regional ground-water flow within a part of the SEPGWMA.