Efforts to more accurately track commercial groundwater use in Oklahoma failed again this year at the Legislature after facing tight deadlines and some pushback from agricultural interests.
State law requires operators of commercial groundwater wells — used for things like agriculture or oil and gas production — to send in reports of their groundwater usage. But many users report that they draw exactly how much water their permit allows, or they don’t send in reports at all, Oklahoma Water Resources Board Director Julie Cunningham told lawmakers last year.
Penalties for nonreporting or overuse are scarce. The state had never fined a permit holder for overusing water before last year. But reports of declining groundwater in certain parts of the state and fears over future water availability have pushed officials to pay more attention to usage.
Two bills aimed to tighten rules around groundwater monitoring for these commercial wells.
House Bill 1807 would have required all commercial users to implement a measuring system to gauge groundwater use from their wells and for that data to be used in an annual report. The bill stalled at the end of the legislative session.
Another bill, Senate Bill 259, would also have required measuring systems on commercial wells and given the Oklahoma Water Resources Board clearer enforcement capabilities and tasked it with updating technology for data collection. But the bill never received a hearing.
“If we don’t know how much water we’re using, how do we know how much water we have and what the situation is with our underground aquifers?” said Rep. Carl Newton, R-Cherokee, author of House Bill 1807. “A lot of these aquifers are going to be good for my life, but what about my kids and grandkids?”
Critics of the bills pointed to the potential for groundwater users to cover the cost of buying expensive new equipment to measure water flow. One lawmaker said it could cost farmers $30 million across the state to measure all of their wells. Newton disputed that number.
Groundwater in Oklahoma is also considered a private property right, meaning rule changes can be met with skepticism. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed a groundwater monitoring bill last year, calling it government overreach and a violation of property owner rights.
Scott Arthaud, president of the Oklahoma Panhandle Irrigator’s Association, said farmers in the panhandle are already participating in programs with the federal government and Oklahoma State University to learn about and implement conservation methods.
“Agriculture is the number one driver of our economy in this part of the state, so we take the management of our water and land very seriously,” Arthaud said in a statement provided to The Frontier. “We appreciate the decision to consider this issue in greater detail before adopting a costly mandate on farmers that may not actually contribute to conservation.”
One water law change that irrigators may support would be multi-year flex permits, said Matt Steinert, president of Oklahoma Irrigator’s Alliance, in a statement. These would allow flexibility in how much water could be drawn each year and also include updates to water use reporting. A version of this idea was included in House Bill 1807.
Nearly 75% of permitted groundwater use in Oklahoma is for irrigation, according to Water Resources Board data.
Duane Smith, director of the Oklahoma Water Institute at East Central University, said good data is important for managing water resources. But the real issue is that current state law permits more water to be drawn from aquifers than is naturally replenished.
In the Oklahoma panhandle, the Ogallala Aquifer provides nearly all of the water for farming in Texas County, allowing it to generate more than $1 billion in agricultural products in 2022, the highest dollar amount in the state, according to federal data. A bulletin from Oklahoma State University in May said the water source was “in crisis” and may only support agriculture in the region for 30 more years.
Underground aquifers slowly recharge through rain and other water events. But water use — including legal, permitted uses — can outpace recharge rates. In the western half of the state, which gets less annual rainfall, it can take even longer for aquifers to recharge.
“I think the bigger discussion is how are we going to be sustainable long term?” Smith said.
The Water Resources Board asked the Legislature for an additional $1.7 million in funding this year, some of which would go toward better compliance monitoring, Chris Neel, water rights administrative division chief with the Water Resources Board, told The Frontier earlier this year. Instead, the agency’s budget remained flat this year, Neel said.
Both bills are still eligible to be heard in the 2026 legislative session.
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