CARSON CITY, Nev. — Marty Plaskett upgraded his farming equipment and spent $60,000 on new sprinklers to conserve water, even before the rural Nevada valley where he farms alfalfa began more strictly managing groundwater.

Now, Plaskett is weighing another adjustment: selling off part of his legal right to use water that lies under his land to the state.

Even after a wet winter, Nevada and much of the West are still dealing with the effects of a prolonged drought that depleted groundwater supplies. Lawmakers in Nevada are considering a bill to allow the state to buy groundwater rights in diminished basins so nobody could use them again.

In the area where Plaskett farms, the state severely overestimated decades ago just how much water was available from wells sunk deep into fractured rock and gravel.

The Legislature hasn’t determined how much farmers would be paid to give up some rights to groundwater.

“It would mainly come down to, number one, the price,” said Plaskett, 57.

States throughout the West are grappling with similar issues over how to conserve water deep underground in a variety of political landscapes where experts are skeptical water basins can ever return to sustainable levels. Conservation alone will not be enough, experts say.

California implemented a system in 2014 that requires regional agencies to manage groundwater sustainability plans in places where there was little oversight. The state’s lawmakers last year proposed spending $1.5 billion to buy senior water rights, but the idea didn’t have enough support.

Arizona passed sweeping groundwater management legislation in 1980, though experts said the state isn’t on track to ensure what is pumped out is recharged by 2025.

“It’s an indication of this big, transitional time that Western states are in,” said Sarah Porter, executive director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “We’re taking a different view of groundwater these days.”

Much of the spotlight over water scarcity in Nevada has been on the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which relies almost exclusively on the Colorado River. But in large swaths of rural Nevada, more groundwater exists on paper than is actually available.

Several decades ago, Nevada’s semi-arid landscape was promoted as a place where groundwater was plentiful. The state didn’t have a good way to determine just how much water was under the land surface at the time but doled out rights to use it.

Those parched landscapes have gotten a temporary reprieve by way of a historically wet winter. But the precipitation won’t be enough to pull rural areas out of a drought or refill aquifers.