Michael De Alessi
10/01/2004
In the arid western United States, the earliest settlers fought over streams, then they fought over rivers. Eventually they banded together to lobby for ambitious water development projects to transfer water hundreds of miles to irrigate their land. They succeeded on a grand scale, turning desert into productive farmland that now provides low-cost produce to the world year-round.
We as a nation, however, continue to pay a premium for this luxury in the form of heavy agriculture subsidies, environmental degradation and acrimonious legal and political battles over who should have access to water resources. Water transfers, and the convoluted body of law and policy that facilitates them, are ground zero for urban-versus-rural conflicts throughout the increasingly populous Sunbelt states. Without a new approach to managing these competing interests, conflicts over water will only worsen.
Californians recently previewed this rancorous future in a highly publicized three-way water-rights battle involving landowners in the agricultural Imperial Valley, developers in burgeoning San Diego and environmentalists. At stake was control of the 3 million acre-feet of water that Imperial farmers use each year to grow high-value winter vegetables such as lettuce and asparagus. (An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons—enough to submerge one acre one foot deep.) If this seems like a lot of water, it is: By comparison, the 3.8 million residents of the city of Los Angeles use less than 700,000 acre-feet of water annually. Because of laws crafted decades earlier, the farmers held rights to the water; developers and environmentalists wanted them.
In California, agriculture is a vital, $27 billion part of the state economy. But cities and environmental groups also have strong interests in the water. Which of these competing parties is most important? Fortunately, and perhaps startlingly, we do not have to answer this question, because there is no real water shortage in California. The state’s—and the West’s—water problems result from irrational policies and ill-defined water rights, not from a dearth. This notion amounts to heresy in some quarters, but the recent Imperial Valley imbroglio would not have arisen if water rights were strong enough to support a rational price structure.
Irrigate or Abdicate
Western water rights apply only to the use of water. In Imperial, for example, if farmers do not use their full allotment of water, they lose it. There is no compensation for unused water, which simply passes on to the next person in line. Not surprisingly, flood irrigation is the norm.
Environmental uses often do not count, although some states have expanded the definition of “use” to include ecological purposes. This enables groups like the Oregon Water Trust to lease and buy water from farmers and ranchers to keep it in streams for salmon. Until the state changed the law to allow this as a use, farmers and environmentalists fought furiously; now they are making deals.
Such agreements are difficult to find in the Imperial Valley, where growers pay only the delivery cost of water, approximately $15 per acre-foot. Despite such low prices, farmers commonly net less than $258 per acre for the produce they grow using more than five acre-feet of irrigation water. Needing to quench the thirst of a growing populace, San Diego offered the farmers $258 per acre-foot for this water.
So why do farmers in Imperial not band together and sell “their”
water? In a word, politics. Farmers do not hold the water rights in the valley;
the Imperial Irrigation District does. The district board is elected by popular
vote, so it is more interested in redistributing the county’s water wealth as
broadly as possible among the electorate than it is in cost-effective water
conservation.
Under pressure from the federal government, farmers,
developers and environmentalists reached an agreement in late 2003—after seven
years of negotiations. While this skirmish is over, others across the West will
soon be fought due to bad law, inept policy and political self-interest. In
order to balance competing water uses, Western states must work toward a system
in which the public interest manifests itself through voluntary exchanges of
water, not prolonged political battles. Otherwise, water supplies will remain
uncertain, and the entrepreneurs, philanthropists and thought leaders who define
the West’s future will not be able make long-term decisions. This possibility
will leave everyone thirsty.
 | Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy for the Reason Public Policy Institute and fellow in environmental studies at the Pacific Research Institute. |