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You now own something you previously didn’t: The water under your property.

In a ruling that Farm Bureau’s Larry Gearhardt said "may have monumental effects in the state of Ohio," the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 21 that landowners now have a property right attached to the water beneath their land.

Previously the courts held that landowners had an interest in groundwater but not actual ownership explained Gearhardt, OFBF’s director of local affairs. The new ruling gives farmers and other landowners a stronger legal right to the water.

Along with this new right comes a new responsibility.

"The landowner needs to determine through well testing or other testing what is the amount of water they can reasonably expect from that aquifer. They have the burden of proving what their property right is before they can make a claim that anyone’s taken it from them," according to Gearhardt.

Having this information will be essential if a landowner ever has a need to file a claim for compensation, a situation that Gearhardt thinks may become more common.

"Under current law, municipalities can go outside their boundaries to sink wells and pump the water back into the cities," he said. Gravel pits, mining and other land uses also have the potential to draw down water supplies. Under the new court ruling, "de-watering the surrounding properties has the potential to be considered a taking and compensation could be required," Gearhardt said.

Quantifying how much water is under a property will be very difficult to verify, according to geologists. Groundwater, which flows laterally, doesn’t just soak into the ground and stay there. The volume of water in an aquifer varies seasonally because the groundwater level can fluctuate as much as eight feet in a six-month period.

A starting point for landowners is to periodically measure the static water level in their wells and keep records. Having a baseline and tracking changes will give an idea of how the water table behaves. For example, measuring water levels at least once during each season will help provide water level fluctuation information throughout the year. This baseline information would be useful in the event that neighboring activities have impacted the property owner’s use of the groundwater.

More detailed inventories might be purchased from companies which specialize in environmental engineering or hydro-geological consulting. But even professional services would likely be able to provide only an estimate of the volume of water under a property. For more information go to the featured links section at www.ofbf.org and click on "Groundwater."