Allocation of Augmented Water Supply Under a Priority Water Rights System

Over the past decade there has been increasing alarm worldwide about water scarcity, which, it is feared, will lead to massive malnutrition and famines, thirst, and unhygienic dwelling conditions as well as to violent clashes among different users and even wars between nations. Consequently, as a way of mitigating possible conflicts over increasingly scarce water resources there has been increased attention on clarifying what water rights entail. This in itself has raised another conflict: a conflict over the way in which water rights are defined. Much of the international debate has posed the issue as a simple dichotomy between economic efficiency and basic welfare or human rights. A closer look at the multiple forms of water rights derived from state, customary, local, and religious laws, however, reveals more complexity in the principles and values underlying how rights are defined, both in terms of abstract and specific situations as well as in terms of how they are actualised or put into practice by different parties. Both water rights and the laws from which they are derived are linked to wider cultural meanings and values associated with water and notions about what are fair and just or equitable. Often, several laws and notions of equity coexist and interact in a given social field, such as a community, village, or nation state. There may, for example, be a different constellation of rights and different notions of equity concerning drinking water than concurring irrigation or environmental uses. Therefore, when discussing water rights, it is important not to speak of water in general but to disaggregate water uses and water property regimes; only thus will we understand the plurality of values, meanings and notions of equity attached to water. This paper discusses the links between water rights and the broader meanings, values, and notions of equity attached to water, as reflected in state local laws and selected religious laws. Different conglomerations of rights to water (understood broadly to include both rights to use and rights to control or make decisions) for different uses and in different water (property) rights regimes are examined. More specifically, the state laws of selected Western and non-Western countries; Hindu, Muslim and Christian laws (especially those relating to drinking water); and several local or customary laws dealing with water are discussed. The paper argues that, rather than seeking a single, hegemonic type of water law or valuation of water, recognizing the pluralistic legal frameworks, types of rights, and meanings of water is not only a more realistic viewpoint, but also one which can lead to more productive negotiations over water rights and water use. Water Nepal Vol. Vol.9-10, No.1-2, 2003, pp.37-61

When it comes to water use in the west, the general rule is “first in time, first in right,” otherwise known as the prior appropriations doctrine. However, another rule that also holds fast and true is that there are always exceptions to the rule. One of the exceptions to the prior appropriations doctrine in regards to ground water rights is that certain water uses are ruled “exempt” from many states’ water rights administration processes. These states “exempt” ground water use for domestic and stock watering purposes from their water rights application processes, considering the amount of water extracted for these uses to be a de minimus amount of water used in relation to the relatively larger amounts of water extracted for irrigated agriculture, industrial, and municipal uses. This exception to the rule has resulted in an ever increasing use of exempt domestic wells as water supplies for new residential developments in many suburban and exurban areas of the western United States, in essence utilizing exempt wells as a substitute for developing municipal water supplies. This expansion in the use of exempt domestic wells has raised concerns about the sustainability of ground water resources within several western basins, created conflict between traditional water rights holders and water users that rely on newly developed exempt domestic wells, raised concern about the reliability of the ground water supplies for the exempt domestic well users themselves, and the impact that exempt wells have on ground water quality during their development, use, and abandonment. A conference was held in May of 2011 in Walla Walla, WA, whose purpose was to develop a broader understanding of the issues associated with exempt wells and to provide a forum for professionals engaged in ground water development, water management, land planning, and water policy to discuss the impacts that exempt domestic wells have on water supplies and land development at the local and regional level. This conference was sponsored by a number of research centers and institutes that are members of the National Institutes of Water Resources, including the State of Washington Water Research Center at Washington State University, the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University, the Montana Water Center at Montana State University, the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute at the University of Idaho, and the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University. The goal of this conference was to identify the critical issues associated with the management and impacts of exempt domestic wells, and to stimulate new ideas to solve the conflicts that have arisen between traditional water rights holders and water users that rely on exempt domestic wells. From this conference a number of papers were solicited from authors that cover a range of issues that have arisen due to the continuing expansion of the use of exempt wells across the Western US. This journal issue provides an overview of these issues that are now coming to the forefront in regards to exempt wells, with articles covering the legal standing of exempt wells, potential problems that have

Applying models to developed agricultural regions remains a difficult problem because there are no existing modeling codes that represent both the complex physics of the hydrology and anthropogenic manipulations to water distribution and consumption. We apply an integrated groundwater – surface water and hydrologic river operations model to an irrigated river valley in northwestern Nevada/northern California, United States to evaluate the impacts of climate change on snow‐fed agricultural systems that use surface water and groundwater conjunctively. We explicitly represent individual surface water rights within the hydrologic model and allow the integrated code to change river diversions in response to earlier snowmelt runoff and water availability. Historically under‐used supplemental groundwater rights are dynamically activated within the model to offset diminished surface water deliveries. The model accounts for feedbacks between the natural hydrology and anthropogenic stresses, which is a first‐of‐its‐kind assessment of the impacts of climate change on individual water rights, and more broadly on river basin operations. Earlier snowmelt decreases annual surface water deliveries to all water rights, not just the junior water rights, owing to a lack of surface water storage in the upper river basin capable of capturing earlier runoff. Conversely, downstream irrigators with access to reservoir storage benefit from earlier runoff flowing past upstream points of diversion prior to the start of the irrigation season. Despite regional shifts toward greater reliance on groundwater for irrigation, crop consumption (a common surrogate for crop yield) decreases due to spatiotemporal changes in water supply that preferentially impact a subset of growers in the region.

The effective management of water resources in Alberta is crucial to sustainable agriculture, industrial development, and environmental management. The historical water allocation mechanism, administrative apportionment, has been viewed in recent years as ineffective and cumbersome. Accordingly, the revision of the Water Act in 1996, included an attempt to improve the efficiency of water allocation. By making the transfer of water rights possible, the revised Act provides many new options for water use and flexibility. The implications of transferable water rights in Alberta water policy must be carefully considered in order to determine the viability and suitability of such a system in the provincial context. This project examines some of the economic aspects of transferable water rights and the potential for effective water allocation by way of transfers in an Alberta setting. As a major part of this project, a hedonic price model, focusing on land values in southern Alberta, was constructed based on similar models, which have been used elsewhere to value water rights or agricultural products. The hedonic approach to market analysis uses the relationship between the price of land and the attributes of the land, such as water availability, soil quality and location, to explain differences in land prices. In this process, the hedonic model is used to estimate the implicit marginal price or value of each land attribute -- in our case, the marginal value of irrigation water. This value will provide us with an indirect estimate of the value of water rights in the region studied. An advantage of the technique is that it estimates the value that farmers express for irrigation water in the market place for land. Such values, then, give us an indication of the anticipated prices, which might prevail for water rights in southern Alberta. The focus of the study was an area of southern Alberta encompassing the counties of Wheatland, Newell, Cypress, Forty Mile, Taber, Warner, Lethbridge and Vulcan and the irrigation districts of Western, Eastern, St.Mary's, Taber, Lethbridge Northern, and portions of Raymond. Information was collected on the physical and economic characteristics of 230 land parcels, which were sold in this region in 1993 and early 1994. A crude comparison of the value of irrigated agricultural land and non-irrigated agricultural land in the sample reveals that irrigated land was worth, on average, $325 more per acre than non-irrigated land. In the ensuing analysis, it was estimated that the value of a parcel of land was determined largely by the buildings on it, the number of acres in the parcel, the proximity of the parcel to a major city (in this case Calgary or Lethbridge), and by the availability of irrigation water. In the hedonic model, the coefficient values of the variables included represent the marginal impact of each of these characteristics on land prices holding all other things constant. For example, the value of water rights represents the average difference between land values of farms that have access to irrigation and farms that do not. This study estimated that every dollar of improvements to farm buildings translates to a one cent increase in the per acre price of the land parcel, where the addition of one extra acre of land to a land parcel lowers the price per acre by $5.17 per acre. Land prices were seen to increase with the proximity of the parcel to large cities. Similarly, the results of the preferred model indicate that the implicit value of having access to irrigation water in southern Alberta is approximately $190 per acre, or, using the conventional estimate that irrigating one acre of land requires 1.5 acre feet of water, this translates to $126 per acre foot of irrigation water. Accordingly, it is revealed that the existence of water rights adds approximately 35% to the value of non-irrigated land. Since this value represents the implicit amount farmers are willing to pay for access to water, it could also be construed as an indirect measure of the value of water rights. From these results, it is reasonable to conclude that water rights do have a measurable impact on land values. Accordingly, proper incentives may be needed to ensure that water is used efficiently and not incorrectly treated as a relatively free or cheap good. One possible method of policy reform to achieve such a system would be the institution of a system of transferable water rights, permitting water to be traded, or effectively sold, at its market price or scarcity value. Further work was done to determine the potential effects of transferable water rights on the Eastern Irrigation District in southern Alberta. Farm budget information was used to gather information and create twelve representative farm types whose financial performance was analysed using linear programming with increasing water quantity constraints. The resulting productive water values were then used to imply potential reallocations of water among farm types and cropping systems. Analysis of the data gathered revealed that all representative farms faced downward sloping demand functions for water. The overall value of water for a 1% reduction ranged from $8 to $250 per acre foot, with the lowest value belonging to largely pasture operations and the highest value attributed to specialty crop producers. This large range in water values for the region indicates that there is sufficient heterogeneity within the EID to accommodate a transferable rights system. Further analysis of the data reveals that the implementation of a transfer system would result in water being transferred to specialty crop producers and the acreage devoted to specialty crops would increase. Small irrigated pasture operations and cereal crop producers would be the first to give up their water allocations under a transfer system. The analysis indicates that there is considerable potential for economic gains from water trade within this district, the main constraint being the market limitations to expanded specialty crop production. Using these two major studies and other sources, this report concludes with a brief evaluation of the economic advantages, disadvantages and other issues involved in instituting a system of transferable water rights in Alberta. Experience elsewhere, primarily in Australia and the western United States, strongly suggests that transferable water rights, despite some drawbacks and problems of implementation, can be a very worthwhile water policy tool. Now that such tradable water rights are permissible under the revised Water Resources Act of 1996, it is recommended that a pilot project involving transferable water rights be instituted in a water short basin or sub-basin in southern Alberta once a water management plan for that basin is completed.

Linking the physical and the socio-economic compartments of an integrated water and land use management model on a river basin scale using an object-oriented water supply model

随着水资源短缺程度的加剧,可交易水权制度逐渐成为当今世界水资源管理制度发展的新方向.水资源初始产权是水资源管理的基础和前提.在干旱区内陆河流域,产权初始配置要在生态环境可持续的前提下,坚持公平、效益相结合的分配目标和配置原则.通过建立初始水权配置指标体系,对黑河流域进行实地问卷调查,在此基础上对用户调查结果进行专家判断修正,应用层次分析法研究了各分配指标的权重分布.以黑河流域张掖地区为例的界定结果表明,除上游的肃南县和山丹县外,其余各县市的实际用水量都超过了各自界定的初始水权,这种差别为水资源产权交易管理提供了现实依据,为开展流域上游的生态保护补偿提供了理论基础.;As the water scarcity increasing, tradable water rights mechanism has been a new direction for water management in the world, and water markets have been founded in some countries abroad. The initial water rights allocation was critical for water market to function actively according to Corse, which has also proved in recent research on water markets. That ecological and environmental water demand should be prior to be satisfied or guaranteed has been realized and accepted widely, especially for the inland river basin in arid regions. At the same time, equity and efficiency are another two basic goals and principles for initial water rights allocation. As initial water rights allocation is a reallocation of utilization situation in existence, various attitudes should be considered as much as possible. We carried out some questionnaire surveys to users in the basin. Based on the users5 survey results, 12 experts from 5 study fields made further judgments to combine the attitudes of both the users and the experts;we obtain the indexes values by AHP analysis. The pilot study of Zhangye prefecture in Heihe river basin showed that the actual utilization in most counties have exceeded their initial allocation except the Sunan county and Shandan county, which has provided some convictive evidences for tradable water rights among different counties and the potential ecological compensation for the upstream in the valley.

Texas is a large state whose water resources vary from relatively abundant in the eastern half of the state to relatively scarce in the western half. In addition, Texas is one of five states nationwide that allocates surface water through a system that merges riparian rights and prior appropriation rights. In some locations and climatic conditions, water rights have been over-allocated, creating a predicament where the legal availability of water exceeds the physical availability. Complicating matters, in 2001, the Texas Legislature established an Instream Flow Program, which conducts studies to identify appropriate flow regimes to maintain an ecologically sound environment. The findings of these instream flow studies could create challenging streamflow requirements that might cause problems for water allocation planning and management. This case study analyzes the full execution of water rights in eleven of twenty-three total river basins in Texas and the corresponding relationship to water availability. Under the full execution scenario, each water rights holder diverts the full volume allocated by a water permit with zero return flow. While this full execution scenario is not necessarily practical since most water rights holders return a portion of the diverted water after use, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality uses the full execution water availability model to evaluate new water rights applications. Using the full execution as a baseline, we created a model to estimate the potential decrease in total water diversions in Texas river basins through the implementation of three alternative cooling scenarios at thermoelectric power plants: 1) converting current open-loop cooling technologies to closed-loop cooling towers, 2) converting all current cooling technologies to hybrid wet-dry cooling, and 3) converting all current cooling technologies to dry cooling using air-cooled condensers. Total annual diversion savings for the three alternative cooling scenarios were determined and translated into human equivalence to show the significance of implementing these cooling technology changes. By implementing these alternative cooling technologies at the plants in all eleven of the river basins considered in this analysis, water diversion could be reduced by as much as 247 to 703 million m3 annually. These diversions can supply enough water for 1.3 to 3.7 million people for one year (each using 0.53 m3 per day). Improvement in volume reliability, the percentage of total demand that is actually supplied over a time period of interest, was also examined to determine the effectiveness of converting existing thermoelectric cooling technologies to alternative cooling technologies that reduce total water diversions. Our results suggest that implementation of alternative cooling technologies at Texas thermoelectric power plants do not translate into significant improvements in volume reliability but can dramatically reduce total water diversion volumes.

It is commonly noted that Australian water rights, specifically those prevailing within the Murray-Darling Basin, represent a significant departure from hydrological reality (see for example Young and McColl 2009). Where water rights depart from the physical realities of water supply networks, water use and water trade decisions may result in external effects and associated allocative inefficiency. This paper examines how a more exclusive set of water property rights based around the concept of capacity sharing (Dudley and Musgrave 1988) might be defined and implemented in complex regulated river systems. In particular, the paper considers how the capacity sharing concept might be generalised to accommodate complex water supply systems (e.g. with multiple storages and or unregulated river flows) and large regulated river basins (e.g. with multiple connected water supply systems). Previous research on water storage rights and capacity sharing (Hughes 2009, Brennan 2008) focused extensively on intertemporal efficiency. In this paper the focus is primarily on spatial efficiency, in particular the potential to improve efficiency by incorporating a more accurate representation of water supply networks into water property rights. The paper also considers some of the challenges that may be associated with implementing such a system of water property rights, including distributional consequences, transaction costs and aspects of ‘jointness’ in the delivery and consumption of water.

The efficiency of two marketable water rights systems in a lentic (lakelike) structure is assessed quantitatively for a case study based on hypothetical irrigation water use. Water rights are simulated on the bases of (1) the expected values of water rights to the users and (2) perfect foresight on the parts of users, and the economic outcomes of these markets are evaluated from both ex ante and ex post perspectives. The market outcomes are compared to the optimal (efficient) scheme and to two alternative nonmarket policies. Distributional aspects of the markets are examined on the basis of individual payoff. Simulation results show that higher efficiency is obtained for the two market systems than for the nonmarket policies and that the market systems recoup about 95% of the economic value of the optimal distribution. The results suggest that most of the 5% efficiency loss should be attributed to the design of the market system itself (i.e., the restrictions imposed by the definition of the rights and/or the water rights allocation policy), rather than the users' inability to predict future events.

Eco-profile studies help in continuous assessment and monitoring of river basin functions; the planners, and decision-makers deploy study findings to address problems associated within river basins. In this paper, we reviewed the study covering the eco-profile based watershed and river basin management practices and the benefits of eco-profile in understanding and addressing water-related issues at the micro-level. The study uses a systematic literature review approach called the PRISMA framework (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) to collect and process the literature. Our study found that eco-profile based implementations improves the river basin functions and addresses the micro-level issues related to water rights and conflicts that are usually not addressed during water resources management. Through eco-profile study, the key ecological indicators at micro and macro scales can be identified that help to predict the continuous changes of biotic and abiotic conditions within the watershed and river basin regions. The present study discusses the advantage of eco-profile in the watershed, measures to comprehend river basin function, community role, and approach to solve the water rights and conflicts at the micro scale. The study also recommends the inclusion of eco-profile framework and eco-profile policy in integrated water resources management programs specific to river basin/watershed management activities.

Water rights management modeling was considered the useful measure to ensure efficient water resources allocation and to avoid intensifying conflicts over water rights. Regarding to the two major patterns of water rights across the world, namely, quantitative water rights (QWR) and duration-based water rights (DWR), the corresponding measures are fastidious. Since QWR was established to set water entitlements instead of DWR in Heihe River Basin, China, the disability of usual DWR tool, managing water diversion by water intakes closing (WIC) during a certain period, has arisen increasingly. The historical data also reflected the low reliability of DWR in allocating water resources quantitatively without modeling guidelines. Aimed at the challenge, a modeling framework and a mixed integer optimization model (MIOM) combing QWR objectives and DWR tools were developed, by which the optimal schemes in Pareto frontier were found to improve the water intake on/off events, including WIC stages, duration days, and starting date through long term series probability analysis and historical data. Results showed that the reliability of DWR allocation was enhanced and WIC duration was reduced significantly compared with current regulation. Scenario analyses indicated that MIOM was powerful for assisting DWR tool to manage QWR and the proposed framework was able to manage water rights efficiently in comparable basins.

We study how institutions such as water rights can complement new irrigation technologies in promoting the sustainability of U.S. agriculture. Using data from the Ogallala‐High Plains Aquifer region of Kansas, we find that water extraction moderately increases after adopting Low Energy Precise Application (LEPA) irrigation, and this rebound effect is in general higher for farmers with larger water rights. About half of the LEPA's rebound effects arise because adopters tend to irrigate more land and grow more water‐intensive crops, with the remaining half attributable to more intensive irrigation. Farmers with greater water rights use more water, with two‐thirds of the effects arising from irrigating larger land areas, and one‐third of the effects attributable to more intensive irrigation. A 10% reduction of water rights will reduce water use by 5% in the long run, and if the reduction targets the majority of the water rights, which lie between 100 and 500 AF, LEPA's rebound effect decreases by 15.4%. Finally, we find that farmers have an incentive to apply a small amount of water in order to preserve their water rights, but the associated water waste is insignificant.

IntroductionImproving the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources is an important step towards water and food security.MethodsBased on China’s provincial panel data from 2015 to 2021, this study uses a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effect of agricultural water rights trading on intensive and economical utilization of water resources.ResultsThe results show that agricultural water rights trading can significantly promote an intensive and economical utilization of water resources at the 1% level, and the results remain valid even after a series of robustness tests. Further analysis indicates that agricultural water rights trading can promote better utilization of water resources by significantly reducing agricultural water consumption at the 1% level and reducing the proportion of agricultural water consumption at the 5% level to optimize water use structure. Moreover, in regions with scarce water resources, strong water resource constraints, more farmland water conservancy projects, and greater economic development, the promoting effect of agricultural water rights trading on the intensive and economical use of water resources is more significant.DiscussionThis study provides evidence of the impact of China’s agricultural water rights trading policy and offers new ideas and experiences to improve China’s water resource utilization efficiency. The contributions of this work are mainly threefold. First, this paper clearly distinguishes the intensive conservation of water resources, presents an evaluation index system, and complements the existing literature on measuring the intensive and economical utilization of water resources. Second, the path of agricultural water rights trading is analyzed to improve the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources, thus enriching related research on transmission mechanisms. Third, the heterogeneity of the influence of different regional conditions on the level of intensive and economical utilization of water resources is discussed to improve relevant policies.

The Colorado River Basin (CRB) includes seven states and provides municipal and industrial water to millions of people across all major southwestern cities both inside and outside the basin. Agriculture is the largest part of the CRB economy and crop production depends on irrigation, which accounts for about 74% of the total water demand cross the region. A better understanding of irrigation water demands is critically needed as temperatures continue to rise and drought intensifies, potentially leading to water shortages across the region. Yet, past research on irrigation dynamics has generally utilized relatively low spatiotemporal resolution datasets and has often overlooked the relationship between climate and management decisions such as land fallowing, i.e., the practice of leaving cultivated land idle for a growing season. Here, we produced annual estimates of fallow and active cropland extent at high spatial resolution (30 m) from 2001 to 2017 by applying the fallow-land algorithm based on neighborhood and temporal anomalies (FANTA). We specifically focused on diverse CRB agricultural regions: the lower Colorado River planning (LCRP) area and the Pinal and Phoenix active management areas (PPAMA). Utilizing ground observations collected in 2014 and 2017, we found an overall classification accuracy of 88.9% and 87.2% for LCRP and PPAMA, respectively. We then quantified how factors such as climate, district water rights, and market value influenced: (1) annual fallow and active cropland extent and (2) annual cropland productivity, approximated by integrated growing season NDVI (iNDVI). We found that for the LCRP, a region of winter cropping and senior (i.e., preferential) water rights, active cropland productivity was positively correlated with cool-season average vapor pressure deficit (R = 0.72; p < 0.01). By contrast, for the PPAMA, a region of summer cropping and junior water rights, annual fallow and active cropland extent was positively correlated with cool-season aridity (precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) (R = 0.46; p < 0.05), and active cropland productivity was positively correlated with warm-season aridity (precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) (R = 0.42; p < 0.01). We also found that PPAMA cropland productivity was more sensitive to aridity when crop prices were low, potentially due to the influence of market value on management decisions. Our analysis highlights how biophysical (e.g., temperature and precipitation) and socioeconomic (e.g., water rights and crop market value) factors interact to explain seasonal patterns of cropland extent, water use and productivity. These findings indicate that increasing aridity across the region may result in reduced cropland productivity and increased land fallowing for some regions, particularly those with junior water rights.

This chapter studies the changes of the surface water rights structure of the Yellow River basin since the founding of New China. First, it examines the basic characteristics of such structure during the planned economy period, then the process of change during the reform and opening up period and then the characteristics of the current structure. Then it devotes the study to the changes in the irrigation water rights allocation mechanisms in two periods before going on to the rational explanation of the changes of the water rights structure since the founding of New China, with emphasis put on the entitlement system, including (1) entitlement system in the irrigation water rights allocation since the country introduced reform and opening up policies, when resource quota was extensively replaced by input quota; (2) the differences in the entitlement systems in the irrigation areas of the upper reaches and the lower reaches and their differences in path option in institutional reform; (3) resource quota entitlement system widespread at the other levels of water rights allocation. As the current water rights are allocated by administrative means, it conforms to the hierarchical water rights structure studied in the previous chapters and so there is no need for repeated explanations. This chapter dedicates a considerable space to examining the operation of the current water rights structure and the relations between the current water resource management system and the quality of water rights. By analyzing the data at the three levels of the Yellow River basin, local governments and groups, this chapter carries out effective testing of the current water rights allocation by administrative means and sum up the theoretical implications of the water allocation practice since 1987 in the Yellow River basin (Xia & Pahl-Wostl, 2012).