Blaine Early and Kathryn Taylor (a summer associate with the firm) explore how regulators, water users, legislators, and the courts are responding to severe droughts in west Texas and the Southeastern United States by allocating water among competing users, incentivizing conservation, or, in an example of the law of unintended consequences, triggering greater depletion of limited groundwater reserves. The authors consider the economic and environmental consequences of drought in the two regions and posit that Georgia legislators should consider a system such as that adopted by Texas, allowing counties and cities to provide financial incentives for rainwater harvesting.

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