Acquiring Water For Energy PDF Download

Basic information is presented about the legal, political, and social constraints faced by energy developers in the acquisition of water from underground, irrigation return flow, municipal waste, and saline sources. It is a guide to those institutional constraints which are general and pronounced enough to be important for regional assessments. First, attention was focused on the acquisition phase of the water use cycle. Second, constraints were analyzed primarily from a regional, rather than state-by-state, perspective. Emphasis was placed generally on the West - particularly the synfuel-rich Rocky Mountain states, the East, and Mid-West, in that order. Alaska and Hawaii were not surveyed. Third, the study focuses on the constraints associated with groundwater, municipal waste, irrigation return flow, and sea water, in that order. The phrase, institutional constraints, as used in the study, means legal, social, economic, and political restrictions, requirements, circumstances, or conditions that must be anticipated or responded to in order to acquire water for energy development. The study focuses primarily on legal constraints and secondarily on political constraints, because they tend to encompass or reflect other forms of institutional constraints.