What drives cities to adopt groundwater banking?: a cross-case analysis of US cities

Abstract As climate change increases water supply variability, urban water utilities must adopt innovative strategies to enhance water system sustainability. Groundwater banking (GWB), or the storage of water in aquifers for later use, is a relatively novel water management strategy that can help utilities adapt to such challenges while providing several benefits over more typical resilience actions. However, its slow and unevenly distributed adoption suggests a need to better understand the drivers of and barriers to GWB adoption. We use a mixed-methods approach to analyze conditions that may promote, or hinder, GWB adoption in 16 urban water systems in the United States in order to draw lessons for other systems. We find that specific environmental and legal conditions are necessary to facilitate GWB adoption, though they must coincide with context-dependent policy, economic, social, and/or technical conditions. We also identify several potential barriers to GWB adoption, which may be more easily overcome by water utilities with access to financial and technical resources. These findings can help resource managers assess the viability of adopting GWB and similar innovative water resilience strategies in their unique management contexts.