As a result, well-owners are not liable to other landowners for damaging their wells or taking water from beneath their land.
Another advantage of this system is that it leads to minimal government involvement in the operations of water wells.
This system benefits those who have low demand for water but own large expanses of property - such as ranchers - and harms those who have a high demand for water without correspondingly large tracts of land - such as cities and some irrigators.
This rule does not guarantee the landowner a set amount of water, but allows unlimited extraction as long as the result does not unreasonably damage other wells or the aquifer system.
The determination of who gets a well and how much water may be pumped is usually made by a court unless the state creates a regulatory agency to perform that function, and the primary issue is the "reasonableness" of the use.
The reasonableness standard is also highly dependent on the location of the suit and who ends up in the jury pool.
Where the water is not owned by the state and the tort law proves to be an inadequate means to prevent overproduction, states have created administrative regulatory agencies to allocate groundwater rights between competing landowners.