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Show 56 GROUND WATER water from the basin or will be required to pay to the early users their additional costs in lowering their wells or pumping, or both. Most appropriation States have indicated that there is no absolute right to artesian pressure as a means of delivering the water to the surface, because such a result would prevent development and utili- zation of the ground water within the basin (the cost of such develop- ment would be prohibitive in most cases if each new appropriator had to pay the additional costs of every existing user within the basin). On the other hand, the same States usually provide a de- gree of protection to the priority of the early users in their means of diversion by providing that the pressure cannot be reduced, or the water level lowered, beyond that which is reasonable. No definitive guidelines exist as to what the measure of reason- ableness is or how it will be applied. The circumstances vary from area to area, and the determination is complicated by the fact that some water users can afford to pay much higher costs in obtaining water because they put it to higher valued uses. For example, mu- nicipalities and industries ordinarily can afford to pump water from substantial depths, because their use of water yields relatively high economic returns, whereas farmers ordinarily cannot afford to pay comparable costs to pump water from equivalent depths for irri- gation uses. While legal distinctions usually are drawn between a right to artesian pressure as a means of diversion and a right to have a water level in an underground basin retained at a stable level, such distinctions are largely without substance. For example, if a water user drills a well into an underground basin which has no artesian ¦pressure, and encounters water which can be pumped from a depth of 50 feet, then his costs in obtaining the water are measured by his expense in obtaining the water from that depth. If subsequent users draw water from the basin to the extent that the water level is lowered to a depth of, say, 500 feet, then the early water user must pump from an additional depth of 450 feet, increasing his cost of obtaining the water correspondingly. • As a practical economic matter, the early water user has been dam- aged or injured just the same as a water user who had drawn water ¦from an artesian basin, and who had enjoyed the natural flow of the water to the surface, but who subsequently is required to pump in order to get his water. It should be emphasized that water users drawing water from ar- tesian basins as well as nonartesian basins are fully protected in the amount of water which they appropriated, and the only question addressed is whether such water users must sustain additional ex- pense as the basin is developed in order to obtain that water. The law has provided no satisfactory answers with respect to legal rights in artesian pressures or water levels in underground reservoirs, and, as a result, administrators who are charged with water resource re- sponsibilities in developing and regulating underground reservoirs have been largely frustrated. A closely related problem is that of mining ground water, which occurs when the water withdrawn ex- •ceeds the annual recharge to the basin, and where the basin |