Globally, groundwater overdraft poses significant challenges to agricultural production. As a result, it
is likely that new water management policies and governance arrangements will be needed to stop groundwater
depletion and maintain agricultural viability. Drawing on interviews with state and non-state water managers and
other water actors, this paper provides a study of a recent resource management agreement between surface
water and groundwater irrigators in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer region of Idaho. Using adaptive governance
as our descriptive framework, we examine how groundwater governance arrangements emerge and are applied
to mitigate the impacts of groundwater overdraft. Our findings suggest that adaptive governance, while not a
stated goal of the agreement, may enable flexible and sustainable social and ecological outcomes. Our findings
also indicate that this new governance arrangement creates a vacuum in enforcement authority that may prove
challenging as the management agreement is implemented. These findings extend our understanding of the
conditions necessary for effective adaptive governance of groundwater resources, and highlight the challenge of
creating capacity for local resource managers as governance shifts from more bureaucratic to adaptive and
decentralised arrangements
