Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Water.

EL Paso (Tex.); TEXAS

Our nation's interest in ensuring adequate water supplies in an era of scarcity has recently highlighted water resource management as a highly salient, conflictual, and emotion-laden public policy issue. One significant component of the water management debate concerns the constitutionality of state laws banning or restricting the export of groundwater to other states. The analytical focus of this study is New Mexico's experience as it sought first to deny and later to place severe limits on the export of groundwater to the city of El Paso, Texas. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to chronicle what can happen and why when state regulators seek to limit the access of nonresidents to their water supplies; and, second, to ascertain the implications of such disputes for water resource management. The analysis (1) reveals the need for expeditious congressional attention to this issue given the economic, environmental, and natural resource stakes involved for the nation; (2) suggests that a confluence of contextual factors might provide a "policy window" conducive to both state regulatory reform and adaptation of social assessment techniques geared to a broader representation of values in water resource management; and (3) highlights the administrative burdens placed on state officials trying to cope with growth management within the context of the "Reagan Revolution." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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