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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. 

Abstract In complex, polycentric environmental governance systems, actors may choose to collaborate with one another to reduce their collective vulnerability and enhance system function. However, collaboration can be costly, and little evidence exists for how particular collaborative forums impact the broader governance system in which they are embedded. To address this gap, we investigate the role of intermediate collaborative forums, which support collaboration among a subset of system actors, in polycentric governance systems. Empirically, we analyze the structural and functional role of an intermediate collaborative forum called the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) within the municipal surface water governance network for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) in Arizona, United States. To do this, we draw from 21 interviews with water professionals in the PMA, which we analyze through a combination of network analysis and qualitative coding. We find that AMWUA facilitates strong bonding capacities among members, allowing for streamlined bridging to the rest of the network that enhances information processing and advocacy of member needs. Our findings advance theory on the role of collaboration in polycentric systems and inform the design of collaborative institutions to improve environmental governance.