Access for sale? Overlying rights, land transactions, and groundwater in California

Abstract

Climate change intensifies longstanding tensions over groundwater sustainability and equity of access among users. Though private land ownership is a primary mechanism for accessing groundwater in many regions, few studies have systematically examined the extent to which farmland markets transform groundwater access patterns over time. This study begins to fill this gap by examining farmland transactions overlying groundwater from 2003–17 in California. We construct a novel dataset that downscales well construction behavior to the parcel level, and we use it to characterize changes in groundwater access patterns by buyer type on newly transacted parcels in the San Joaquin Valley groundwater basin during the 2011–17 drought. Our results demonstrate large-scale transitions in farmland ownership, with 21.1% of overlying agricultural acreage statewide sold at least once during the study period and with the highest rates of turnover occurring in critically overdrafted basins. By 2017, annual individual farmland acquisitions had halved, while acquisitions by limited liability companies increased to one-third of all overlying acres purchased. Together, these trends signal increasing corporate farmland acquisitions; new corporate farmland owners are associated with the construction, on comparable parcels, of agricultural wells 77–81 feet deeper than those drilled by new individual landowners. We discuss the implications of our findings for near-term governance of groundwater, and their relevance for understanding structural inequities in exposure to future groundwater level declines.