Formal water law is part of a country’s natural resources and environmental legislation. Surface andgroundwater are dealt with in a single water law or in two or more pieces of legislation, includinglaws and regulations, sometimes in a piecemeal fashion. Recently a trend has developed to addressboth resources in one water law complemented by subsidiary legislation (orders, decrees,regulations and the like), whereas historically surface and groundwater have often been addressedby different laws and regulations, compromising an integrated approach and posing greaterchallenges with respect to coherence and consistency. In federal states the management of waterresources may be fully or partly attributed to individual states resulting in a legal framework that isnot uniform nationwide. This is the case for instance in Germany, India and the US. In India thefederal government has tried to influence state legislation by circulating a model groundwater bill(“Model Bill to Regulate and Control the Development of Groundwater”, 1970, revised and recirculatedin 1992, 1996 and 2005) and over the last fifteen years a number of states have enactedlegislation based on the model.