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Water markets in the western United States have expanded over the last 40 years driven by two forces – population growth in the West and Southwest and limited development of new storage projects. Until 2008 house prices, home construction and population growth appeared to be locked in an ever-increasing upward trend. With little historical experience to the contrary, water market prices similarly appeared to be driven by real estate development. The collapse of the housing market in the last three years provides an opportunity to examine the connection between the real estate and water markets.

It is the basis for research of participatory irrigation management sustainable development to analyze irrigation engineering management performance and its cause. The paper quantitatively evaluates the PIM performance in hydraulic engineering by electing 13 indicators such as social, economic and water management etc and using AHP and TOPSIS two types of statistical methods, and analyzes the quantitative results from the point of water rights relationship among irrigation management participants. Results show that based on the decentralized mechanism designed for water right, in participatory irrigation management, profit-oriented contract relationship and cooperation-oriented contract relationship are formed among the irrigation management participants. These contracts promote positively irrigation effects, and can play a more visible and continuous role at the basis of improving the water pricing system, enhancing self-management awareness and organization degree and capability of peasant.

Conflicts among regions emerge easily during initial water right allocation in river basin. Firstly, the paper proposed the root cause of these conflicts is because of some regions being allocated with excessive water right, and others with too little water right. Then, the formation mechanism and evolution of the conflicts are analyzed. By building evolutionary game model of two groups, which are “regions with excessive water right” group and “regions with too little water right” group, the replicator dynamics and evolutionary stable strategy of each group are analyzed, stability analysis of the evolutionary game system is also done. The study makes a conclusion that there is a unique ESS of the evolutionary game between the two groups; if each region's initial water right is adjusted according to ESS, the conflicts would be eliminated and harmonious and orderly environment for using water resource would be set up.

Under the background of frequent occurrence of extreme drought as well as increasing attention to water shortage, regional water right distribution has become a vital approach for local government to advocate water right and manage water resource. The connotation along with subject and object of regional water right are investigated in this article. The manifestations of regional water right include life water right, ecological water right and productive water right. Multi-objective programming model of regional water right distribution in the fields of life, ecology and production is established taking social, ecological and economic targets into account. In accordance with the principle that basic water right superiors than public water right and competitive water right, the distribution priority is confirmed by questionnaires design and AHP method. Finally, empirical research is conducted by data from Ningxia and results are obtained under the condition of objects equilibrium. 0.3188 billion m3 water should be distributed to life activities and 0.1109 billion m3 water should be distributed to ecological activities, 7.3331 billion m3 to production activities according to the abovementioned empirical research.

The Texas Water Availability Modeling System is routinely applied in administration of the water rights permit system, regional and statewide planning, and an expanding variety of other endeavors. Modeling water management in the 23 river basins of the state reflects about 8,000 water right permits and 3,400 reservoirs. Datasets are necessarily large and complex to provide the decision-support capabilities for which the modeling system was developed. New modeling features are being added, and the different types of applications are growing. Certain applications are enhanced by simplifying the simulation input datasets to focus on particular water management systems. A methodology is presented for developing a condensed dataset for a selected reservoir system that reflects the impacts of all the water rights and accompanying reservoirs removed from the original complete dataset. A set of streamflows is developed that represents flows available to the selected system considering the effects of all the other water rights in the river basin contained in the original complete model input dataset that are not included in the condensed dataset. The methodology is applied to develop a condensed model of the Brazos River Authority reservoir system based on modifying the Texas Water Availability Modeling System dataset for the Brazos River Basin., Texas Water Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2010)

The supply mode selection of water transfer projects is closely correlative with water right quality. This paper firstly proposed the concept of water right quality in water transfer project, and set up its quantitative model from the view of economy. Then the quantitative boundaries between the three kinds of supply modes, which are government supply mode, public-private partnership supply mode and private supply mode respectively, are given based on water right quality. Finally, according to the boundaries, water transfer projects are classified into three types correspondingly, and the supply scopes and investment duties of the public sectors and the private sectors in different types of water transfer projects are further discussed. The conclusions of this paper have some guiding significance in practice.

This dissertation adopt principal-agent theory of information economics to analyze water right management in our country. Due to separation of ownership, usage right and operation right, the Central Government, all levels of provinces, units, individuals, environmental protective institutions and so on participate in water right transaction. The dissertation reveals the intrinsic connection between the water rights management and the principal-agent theory, and proposes that a multi-level authorization management of water rights can improve the relation of water rights fundamentally. Research every level principal-agent relation in the mode of water rights multi-level authorization management in our country. It has strong practical and guiding significance.

Communities and government world-wide have growing concern over the protection of groundwater resources. We have been studying smart markets as a tool to efficiently allocate groundwater, to protect against groundwater depletion, and to prevent damage to environmentally sensitive areas. In this paper, a smart market is proposed for the combination of ground water and surface water, which includes bids for reservoir releases by a hydropower generator. The smart market here is a periodic auction which uses an optimization model to allocate water. The optimization model includes physical constraints based on the aquifer, surface water availability as calculated in a simulation model, and user bids. The simulation model calculates characteristics of an aquifer such as water availability and the interaction under various pumping regimes with surface water, as water is released for hydropower generation. In addition to the physical constraints provided from the simulation model, the optimization model is constrained by each user’s demand for water. A piece-wise linear demand function relates each user’s willingness to pay for incremental volumes of water. Under the market, users can use their water right, or sell some or all of it to the central pool, or buy additional water. Prices are determined by the exchange of water rights in a bidding system, as in an auction. The bidding system is based on each user’s demand curve, which relates additional volumes of water to prices that they are willing to pay for that additional volume of water.

The study was designed to investigate the improver-mechanisms of agricultural water management in Karaj County from the viewpoints of the farmers All the farmers of Karaj County consisted the statistical population of the study (N 5297). The sample size was determined as 142 persons through Cochran formula and the proportional allocation sampling methodology was used to choose the specimen .A questionnaire was designed and employed to gather the required data .Cronbach's alpha computed to measure reliability of the different parts of questionnaire was above 0.7 for total segments .The gathered data have been analyzed by SPSS software .The findings revealed that increase of efficient monitoring of government on surface water resources and also implementation of watershed projects are the main mechanisms of surface water and underground water management in utilization and about the management of agricultural water transmission, covering the traditional sloughs(in transmission by terrestrial sloughs), using of suitable cover for concrete channels(in transmission by concrete channels) and repairing of junctions in poly ethylene pipes(in transmission by poly ethylene pipes) are the main mechanisms. Also insuring agricultural crops against the drought is the main mechanism of agricultural water consumption in the farms .Moreover, based on the results of factor analysis, the mechanisms of agricultural water management are classified into seven factors which are: enhancing the information of farmers and people, technical improvement of hydraulic structures, improvement of local people participation, improvement of water management, controlling the disturbance of external factors and improving the farming practices. Also implementing the watershed projects and security farmer's water right, using of suitable cover for channels and Designing and holding required training courses are some recommendations in this regard. Key words :Agricultural water, Water management, Farmers, Karaj County

O valor da vazão passível de ser outorgada é influenciado pelo método utilizado para a sua obtenção, sendo que diversas metodologias encontram-se disponíveis para essa finalidade. O Sistema Integrado para a Gestão de Recursos Hídricos (SINGERH) permite obter a disponibilidade hídrica, para qualquer seção de interesse ao longo da rede hidrográfica de uma bacia, e quantificar o impacto da concessão de uma nova outorga nessa disponibilidade, tendo sido utilizado, neste trabalho, para verificar o impacto dos critérios de outorga e dos métodos de regionalização de vazões na estimativa da disponibilidade hídrica da bacia do ribeirão Entre Ribeiros. Inicialmente, foi preparada a base de dados necessária para a aplicação do SINGERH, sendo ela composta do modelo digital de elevação, das vazões mínimas e média, das equações de regionalização de vazões ,dos métodos tradicional e baseado na conservação de massas, e do cadastro de usuários de água da bacia. Os resultados obtidos indicaram a impossibilidade de concessão de novas outorgas até o final do período em análise. As simulações realizadas, além de terem permitido uma avaliação da forma como a variabilidade da disponibilidade hídrica influencia no processo de concessão de outorga, forneceu subsídios para a análise de diferentes critérios adotados para a distribuição de vazões a serem outorgadas. The value of the probably granted discharge is affected by the method used for its obtainment, and several methodologies are available to this purpose. The Integrated System for Water Resources Management (SINGERH) allows to obtaining water availability for any interesting section along the basin hydrographic net, as well as to quantify the impact from the granting of a new water right in this availability. So, it was used in this study in order to verify the impact of either grant criteria and the discharge regionalization methods upon the estimate of water availability in the basin of the Entre Rios creek. The data basis needed to the application of SINGERH was initially prepared. It consisted of digital elevation model of the minimum and medium discharges, regionalization equations of both the traditional method and that based on mass conservation and the cadastre of the basin water users. The results showed the impossibility of new grants for water using right until the end of the period under analysis. The accomplished simulations allowed to evaluate the way how variable water availability affects the water using right process, besides providing subsidies to the analysis of the different criteria adopted for the distribution of discharges to be granted.

Based on the total scheme, we designs the index system of project water right allocation from city uses, industry uses, agriculture uses and environment uses, and uses the multi-objective and multi-layer fuzzy optimal selection to solve the model, at last, take the first period of Eastern Route as an example to verify the model is rational and effective.

The Water Right Analysis Package (WRAP) is applied to the river/reservoir/water use system of the East River basin in south China. With the quasi-historical monthly streamflow series from 1951 to 2000, the water supply reliability of the projected target is assessed under the joint regulation of three large reservoirs. Both long- and short-term simulation are conducted to do the long-term plan and reservoir operations during short drought period. The simulation results have revealed that the general reliability of the system is acceptable, although there is an obvious probability of water shortage induced by inevitable extreme droughts.

The definition of industry-oriented basin initial water right harmonious allocation is put forward, and the criterions of harmony analysis are constructed on the basis of system harmonious theory. Then, based on interactive decision theory, interactive objective step tradeoff coupling model is given combining interactive step tradeoff method with objective programming model, to take the knowledge on water right initial allocation of different water sectors in different regions into account, and constantly adjust the water right allocation schemes of each regional water sector in the basin, finally, new schemes of industry-oriented basin water right harmonious allocation could be gained to pass the harmony analysis, Realizing industry- oriented basin initial water right harmonious allocation. Keywords-basin initial water right; industry-oriented; harmonious allocation; interactive objective step tradeoff coupling model

The Board of Supervisors of the San Luis Obispo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (District) adopted the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Nacimiento Water Project (Project) in January 2004, thus providing direction to District staff to begin the design of the raw water conveyance for 15,750 acre-feet per year from Lake Nacimiento located in San Luis Obispo County, California. The District had secured this water right in 1959, and over four decades thereafter, feasibility studies indicated the economical source of water supply for communities within the County was from groundwater; however, the time came when the next economical supply of supplemental water was the surface waters stored behind Nacimiento Dam, and the Project born. The Project consists of 45-miles of pipeline ranging from 36- to 12-inches, three pump stations, and three water storage tanks. The Project's Participants (customers) currently include Paso Robles, Templeton, Atascadero, and San Luis Obispo (Initial Participants) and later were joined by San Luis Obispo County Service Area 10- Zone A. The design phase of the Project began in 2004, and continued through the successful bidding of the Project in the fall of 2007. An army of consultants was hired by the District to perform several professional services including design engineering, environmental permitting, right-of-way, and financing. This paper describes the hydraulic design of the Project and related engineering elements of the Project design.

The water right trade should consider externality (water quality degradation) elimination to maintain environment. The externality is evaluated using water quantity and quality model. Externality elimination follows with the principle that environmental requirement is satisfied with minimum pollution emission reduction. A case study is made in the midstream of Heihe River in Northwest China. The result shows that the districts having large pollution emission has to cut down their pollution emission to achieve extra water in the water market. It is helpful to sustainable development.

The Nueces River System has been subject to adaptive management since construction of the Choke Canyon Reservoir in 1982. A special condition required the City of Corpus Christi to provide not less than 185 million cubic meters (151,000 ac-ft) of water per year to the Nueces Estuary through a combination of spills, releases, and return flows to maintain ecological health and productivity of living marine resources. However, no releases were made and salinities in Nueces Bay increased to hypersaline conditions during the drought period of 1988–1990 and the estuary was inverted where fresher water entered the delta on high tides. In contrast, the bay historically supported populations of shrimp and oysters generally requiring salinities in the range of 10–20 ppt. Beginning in May 1990, the Texas Water Commission issued a series of Orders requiring the City to meet the special conditions contained in their water right permit and provide for freshwater inflows to the estuary. Since 1990, a series of restoration activities, monitoring and experimental studies, and Order amendments has resulted in a stakeholder driven process that increased environmental health while providing a sustainable water supply to the region. However, with climate change and continued development, more changes are likely to occur in the future. The lesson learned is that the goal of achieving consensus can occur with a blend and balance of science and a stakeholder decision process.

Evapotranspiration (ET) of water is a primary component of the hydrologic cycle and is becoming more significant as increasing demands are placed on finite water supplies in Nevada and across the western U.S. Local, state, and federal water resource agencies have a great need for accurate estimates of net irrigation water requirements for evaluating irrigation development, transfers of irrigation water for municipal use, and litigation of water rights applications and protests. The major objective of this study is to update estimates of crop ET and net irrigation water requirements for Nevada. Estimates of ET and net irrigation water requirements are made for all major crops grown in Nevada at over 200 locations using National Weather Service weather stations located throughout the state. The methods for estimating ET follow the new ASCE-EWRI Standardized Penman-Monteith approach, while the net irrigation water requirement for crops is estimated using a dual crop coefficient and daily soil water balance approach. Results show that in central and northern parts of Nevada, the net irrigation water requirement for alfalfa, the primary crop grow in Nevada, is less than the typical permitted amount of irrigation water rights of 4 ac-ft/ac, indicating that if irrigators wish to change or sell their water rights to more consumptive uses, they would not be able to transfer the entire water right. These revised estimates of ET and net irrigation water requirements for various crops will be used for updating basins water budgets and establish the amount of irrigation water that is available for water transfers in the future.

Using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the precipitation records from 1952 to 2000, the drought situation over the East River basin in southern China was analyzed. Different drought categories were then selected to represent different drought conditions. The Conditional Reliability Module (CRM) in the Water Right Analysis Package (WRAP) was used to investigate water supply reliability over the East River basin under several supply scenarios, which were created based on different SPI values and different initial reservoir storage levels. The result of the study revealed that reservoir storage plays a crucial role in maintaining the water supply security. To ensure an acceptable reliability of water supply in the region, the Xinfengjiang Reservoir, which is the biggest reservoir in the East River basin, should keep more than 60% of its conservative storage capacity at the beginning of the dry season of the basin, i.e. October.

It has been tested in practice that markets are more flexible and effective way to allocate scarcity resources, therefore, tradable water rights and effective water markets are needed to be introduced to solve the scarcity of water resources. South-to-North Water Transfer Project is the main engineering measure to relieve the serious water scarcity in Northern China, this paper, however, tries to use markets as another path to increase water efficient use in water imported areas of the East-Route. The main difficulties in establishing water markets in this area have been analyzed, such as the fuzzy defining of water right, the ineffective water management system, and the willingness of water users to buy or sell and the blank of the tradable water rights system; the initial water rights, the tradable water, the facilities, the framework, the transaction rules, the procedure and the supervision to establish water markets in water imported area has been presented. In sum, water resources has been transferred possibly from rich to scare by the means of interbasin water transfer project, water markets institutions allocate these water more efficiently through the path of permitting water users cashing out the water they saved and then encouraging the movement of water from lower valued uses to higher valued uses.

Irrigators in Victoria have a water entitlement which is composed of a highly secure water right and additional water which may be purchased if available. Water entitlements in NSW are based on the irrigated area with the actual volume of water received in any year depending almost entirely on seasonal conditions. Musgrave and Lesueur (1973) argued that these entitlements could be replaced by a portfolio of entitlements, with each type of entitlement in the portfolio guaranteeing a nominated minimum value of water at a different probability. Thus, irrigators could purchase a portfolio of water entitlements which would suit their individual risk preferences. The purpose in this paper is to show how a water authority can construct a portfolio of water entitlements which satisfies these requirements and also to demonstrate that the entitlements in the portfolio satisfy a first degree stochastic dominance relationship. A worked example is presented in which these results are illustrated.

Stormwater can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how it is handled. The conservation and reuse of stormwater can serve to enhance an environment that is lacking in water, even if only during certain times of year. Thus, stormwater that may cause flooding or overburden a collection system can be converted to an asset. The treatment of stormwater using a natural system rather than processing through a wastewater treatment plant can save valuable resources by increasing the capacity and prolonging the useful life of a treatment plant. The reuse of the stormwater before it ever reaches the treatment plant will similarly save resources and can provide additional benefits to water-short end-users. Stormwater can be accessed as a new source of water for municipalities and private enterprises. Innovative approaches to divert and treat or capture and distribute include constructed-wetland stormwater treatment systems, small lot reuse, source reuse, stormwater capture, stormwater storage, and stormwater distribution. In most jurisdictions a water right is not required to use stormwater that is captured before it enters a natural stream or lake. Potential stormwater reclamation opportunities identified as part of an appraisal investigation conducted for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the State of Hawaii are used to illustrate innovative approaches to converting stormwater to an asset. Example project concepts include stormwater interception and storage for addition to an existing irrigation distribution system on the Island of Hawaii, or installation of a deep infiltration trench to capture stormwater from urban development and introduce it into a brackish aquifer used for irrigation on Oahu. Similarly, a stormwater collection, treatment, and beneficial reuse system approach is illustrated by a Vancouver, Washington, project under development to treat industrial stormwater runoff in constructed wetlands for discharge to the Burnt Bridge Creek watershed. This provides an attractive alternative for industries and municipalities to reduce sewer collection and its associated costs and lost capacity. It also provides flow augmentation to the creek and restores watershed features.

Water policy is an important topic on the agenda of the international community, and efficiency and equity in the allocation of water have emerged as important factors to be considered. Water pricing can be used to mitigate both the quantity and quality dimensions of water scarcity. This paper reviews partial equilibrium models and general equilibrium models that are relevant to irrigation water management issues. The most widely discussed issues in these models are water markets and water pricing. The interrelationships between economic, cultural, social, and political aspects that are related to water policy make it difficult to provide a comprehensive policy analysis. General equilibrium models of irrigation water management allow incorporation of both the irrigation sector and the other sectors in the economy and analysis of policies affecting each of them and the interaction between them. In addition to being able to address sector and household specifications, production factors, time horizon, pricing policies, and institutions such as water markets, general equilibrium models allow the analysis of the impact of water policies on equity and poverty alleviation. The authors conclude that, although there has been a significant increase in efforts to analyze water related problems, analytical and empirical research in the field is still deficient and more effort is needed to address them.

Complete reliance on water rights marketsfor an efficient allocation fails to recognize the impact of currently existing social externalities and legal uncertainties. Specifically, it is possible that water may have a “community value” which may not be captured in the market price of a water right, there by precluding an efficient market solution. Also, there are uncertainties related to the legal/institutional process currently governing the use of western water which have the same implications for the standard notion of economic efficiency. These result primarily from inconsistencies in the application of certain legal principles, and the incomplete definition and assignment of ownership rights to the use of water.

Para a implantação da outorga de uso da água se faz necessário definir critérios e estabelecer um mecanismo ou adotar uma ferramenta que permita tanto a agilidade do processo como também a sua transparência de maneira a não suscitar conflitos entre os distintos usuários. Os Comitês de Bacia Hidrográfica têm a responsabilidade de definir políticas para a gestão dos recursos hídricos no âmbito da bacia. Portanto, podem ser considerados como um fórum legal para a discussão da problemática da outorga, que, por sua complexidade, não possui estudos locais que incorporem os valores e aspectos importantes de cada região na análise para a emissão da outorga. Este artigo apresenta um modelo multicritério para avaliação de candidatos potenciais à outorga de uso da água da bacia do rio Cubatão do Sul, especificamente para abastecimento humano. Foi realizada uma avaliação do desempenho de duas alternativas potenciais, o “status quo” e “com melhoramentos em alguns aspectos considerados essenciais”. O modelo global demonstrou que o desempenho do “status quo” está abaixo das expectativas do decisor, pois em vários critérios de avaliação o seu desempenho foi abaixo do nível competitivo. mercado. Palavras-chave: Apoio à decisão, gestão de recursos hídricos, outorga de água.

Spate irrigation is a system of harvesting and managing flood water. In spate irrigation, flood water is emitted from wadis (ephemeral streams) and diverted to fields using earthen or concrete structures. By nature, flood water is unpredictable in occurrence, timing and volume, which puts special challenges to the farmers who use, co-share and co-manage the resource. Primarily based on the research conducted in spate irrigation systems in Eritrea, Yemen and Pakistan, this chapter discusses the interlinkage between local flood water management and water rights and rules, and the enforcement mechanisms in place. It assesses how formal national/provincial land and water laws affect local flood water management and argues that what matters most are the local rules for cooperation and sharing the resource and, hence, that formal water and land rights for spate irrigation should recognize local water rights and management.

The Entiat 4-mile Wells (Entiat 4-mile) project is located in the Entiat subbasin and will benefit Upper Columbia steelhead, spring Chinook and bull trout. The goal of this project is to prevent juvenile fish from being diverted into an out-of-stream irrigation system and to eliminate impacts due to the annual maintenance of an instream pushup dam. The objectives include eliminating a surface irrigation diversion and replacing it with two wells, which will provide Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) with a Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) BiOp metric credit of one. Wells were chosen over a new fish screen based on biological benefits and costs. Long-term biological benefits are provided by completely eliminating the surface diversion and the potential for fish entrainment in a fish screen. Construction costs for a new fish screen were estimated at $150,000, which does not include other costs associated with implementing and maintaining a fish screening project. Construction costs for a well were estimated at $20,000 each. The diversion consisted of a pushup dam that diverted water into an off-channel pond. Water was then pumped into a pressurized system for irrigation. There are 3 different irrigators who used water from more » this surface diversion, and each has multiple water right claims totaling approximately 5 cfs. Current use was estimated at 300 gallons per minute (approximately 0.641 cfs). Some irrigated acreage was taken out of orchard production less than 5 years ago. Therefore, approximately 6.8 acre-feet will be put into the State of Washington Trust Water Right program. No water will be set aside for conservation savings. The construction of the two irrigation wells for three landowners was completed in September 2006. The Lower Well (Tippen/Wick) will produce up to 175 gpm while the Upper Well (Griffith) will produce up to 275 gpm during the irrigation season. The eight inch diameter wells were developed to a depth of 75 feet and 85 feet, respectively, and will be pumped with Submersible Turbine pumps. The irrigation wells have been fitted with new electric boxes and Siemens flowmeters (MAG8000). « less

This paper reviews various applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of water resources. With an increase in the competition over various water resources, the incidents of disputes have been in the center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of various water uses, such as multi-objective water projects, irrigation, groundwater, hydropower, urban water supply, wastewater, and transboundary water disputes. In addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce water resources is possible under a variety of physical conditions and institutional arrangements. In particular, the various approaches for cost sharing and for allocation of physical water infrastructure and flow can serve as a basis for stable and efficient agreement, such that long-term investments in water projects are profitable and sustainable. The latter point is especially important, given recent developments in water policy in various countries and regional institutions such as the European Union (Water Framework Directive), calling for full cost recovery of investments and operation and maintenance in water projects. The CGT approaches discussed and demonstrated in this paper can provide a solid basis for finding possible and stable cost-sharing arrangements.

[1] Over 2000 water market transactions that occurred in the western United States from 1990 to 2003 were examined to learn who sold to whom and for what purpose, how much water was involved, and how much it sold for. The transactions show that much more water changes hands via leases than via sales of water rights. Public agencies and irrigators are the most common lessors, with lessees being fairly evenly distributed across types of buyers. However, with water rights sales, irrigators are by far the most common sellers and municipalities the most common buyers. Across the West in general, the number of leases has been rising in recent years, as have their prices. The prices of water right sales have also been rising, but the number of sales has not. The price of water is highly variable both within and between western states, reflecting the localized nature of the factors that affect water prices.

A modeling and decision support system is currently being developed for the Truckee and Carson River Basins to produce regulated streamflow forecasts, maintain an accounting of water storage categories, and implement proposed changes to basin operating policy. The system will be used to assist basin stakeholders with the coordination of reservoir operations, and is described in detail in related papers presented at this conference. Some of the key elements to the system are the tools used to present the model results to water right owners and stakeholders in the basins. A variety of presentation and communication tools are currently being used to disseminate model results for use by these stakeholders at monthly meetings during the runoff season. These tools are evolving into more innovative communication tools that will assist with the increasingly complicated reservoir operations that will exist in the future under a proposed new basin operating policy. This paper will focus on the communication and presentation tools currently used with the model results to help manage and coordinate operations, and will show some of the tools in development for future use with new basin policy. Experimental tools involving risk and probability associated with model results will be presented, as well as a discussion of the benefits and problems associated with direct model use by stakeholders.

China has experienced a wide-scale and rapid transformation from an agricultural based economy to the manufacturing workshop of the world. The associated relocation of the population from relatively low density rural areas to very high density urban areas is having a significant impact on the quantity and quality of water available as inputs into the production and consumption process, as well as the ability of the water system to absorb and neutralize the waste byproducts deposited into it. Water shortages are most severe in the north of the country, where surface water diversion is excessive and groundwater is being depleted. In addition, the quality of water is deteriorating because of pollution, thereby aggravating existing water shortages. The biggest challenge ahead will be for national and local governments to craft policies and rules within China's complex cultural and legal administrative system that provide incentives for users to increase efficiency of water use, and for polluters to clean up the water they use and return clean water to stream flows. Using a standard public economics framework, water requirements for public goods-such as ecosystem needs-should be set aside first, before allocating property rights in water (to enable water markets to function and generate efficient allocation signals). Even then, water markets will have to be regulated to ensure public goods, such as public health, are not compromised. Until water markets are implemented, staying the course on increasing water and wastewater prices administratively and encouraging water conservation are necessary to reduce the wasting of current scarce water resources, as well as the new water supplies to be provided in the future.

The construction of many water conservancy projects home and abroad caused a series of ecological and environmental problems. The core issue was related to water. Based on this consideration, China stipulated that water resources justification must be conducted for construction projects. By briefly describing the necessity of considering eco-environment water right in water resources justification of construction projects, this paper explained the concept, property and allocation algorithm of river eco-environment water right and emphasized the research on the basic concept and algorithm of eco-environment water requirement. The paper pointed that the eco-environment water requirement could be divided into optimal eco-environment water requirement, objective eco-environment water requirement, critical eco-environment water requirement and status quo eco-environment water requirement by different water requirement properties. From the objective of maintaining the natural structure and function of water eco-environment, the paper pointed that the river eco-environment water requirement in water resources justification of construction projects mainly consisted of river course eco-environment water requirement and floodplain eco-environment water requirement and expounded in detail the theoretical method for calculating the two types of water requirements. By applying the method of calculating eco-environment water requirement for a diversion project of a certain waterworks, the paper found out that the eco-environment water requirement should be 3.854 billion m 3 .

The Yellow River Basin is characterized with ‘different sources of water and sediment, less water and much sediment, mismatching of flow and sediment and uneven distribution of precipitation both in a year and in years’. With the development of economy and society, the contradiction between water supply and water requirement in Yellow River basin has become sharp increasingly and water resources conflicts among different water users occur frequently. Especially in 1990s, the problem of zero-flow in its lower reaches became seriously year after year. This paper introduced the basin water features, analysed the present situation of water utilization and water problems in the Yellow River basin. Then, as for as existing problems presently of water shortage and water pollution, the authors analysed the importance of developing water right management, studies the legal base and problems to implement water right management. At last, the basic thinking of water right management was proposed.

Snowmelt and reservoir storage constitute the irrigation water supply for nearly 1.2 million ha of farm and ranch land in Southern Idaho. A producer’s ability to manage drought is largely dependent on good estimates of the water supply throughout the growing season. Water supply availability is a key determinate of crop type and acreages and can impact operating capital availability and crop insurance rates. While basin water supply estimates are available from federal and state water resource agencies, a producer’s water supply can be vastly different due to water rights based the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation with water allocated based on a priority date. Thus, estimates of water supply availability must take into account water right priority date(s) as well as hydrology in order to allow a producer to assess risk and effectively manage drought. A statistical approach has been developed which incorporates water rights with basin hydrology to derive estimates of the probability of a water shortage and its associated severity at the irrigation district level for Southern Idaho conditions. A description of the statistical approach is presented along with sample results.

This paper analyses water market activities in an irrigation community in southeastern Australia during the first 10 years of operation, in order to establish the extent to which irrigators have become familiar with the use of markets and adopted the concept, and to identify factors impeding and driving the operations of markets for permanent and temporary water. These discussions are based on analysis of water right registers, trading registers, interviews with buyers and sellers of permanent and temporary water, and workshops with key stakeholders in the irrigation industry. The analyses show increased adoption of water markets within irrigation communities and an increased understanding of their operations and advantages. It appears that irrigators are increasingly treating water as a commodity to be bought and sold on a seasonal basis depending on supply, demand and commodity prices. Markets for temporary water have achieved far wider adoption than markets for permanent water. The emergence of a water exchange within the study area has had a significant impact on this process, providing secure, reliable, fast and cheap water transfers. Differential tax treatment, significant policy uncertainty, the administrative complexity and cost associated with markets for permanent water and irrigators’ perceptions of water rights as an inherent part of their property, also are significant factors driving the preference for markets in temporary water.

For 100 years, California’s State Water Resources Control Board and its predecessors have been responsible for allocating available water supplies to beneficial uses, but inaccurate and incomplete accounting of water rights has made the state ill-equipped to satisfy growing societal demands for water supply reliability and healthy ecosystems. Here, we present the first comprehensive evaluation of appropriative water rights to identify where, and to what extent, water has been dedicated to human uses relative to natural supplies. The results show that water right allocations total 400 billion cubic meters, approximately five times the state’s mean annual runoff. In the state’s major river basins, water rights account for up to 1000% of natural surface water supplies, with the greatest degree of appropriation observed in tributaries to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and in coastal streams in southern California. Comparisons with water supplies and estimates of actual use indicate substantial uncertainty in how water rights are exercised. In arid regions such as California, over-allocation of surface water coupled with trends of decreasing supply suggest that new water demands will be met by re-allocation from existing uses. Without improvements to the water rights system, growing human and environmental demands portend an intensification of regional water scarcity and social conflict. California’s legal framework for managing its water resources is largely compatible with needed reforms, but additional public investment is required to enhance the capacity of the state’s water management institutions to effectively track and regulate water rights. S Online supplementary data available from stacks.iop.org/ERL/9/084012/mmedia

This paper presents the overall approach, preliminary findings, and current status of a watershed pollutant trading project on the Truckee River. The Cities of Reno, Sparks and Washoe County and regional stakeholders (watershed managers) are working together to develop a watershed and water quality model for the Truckee River in order to identify significant sources of point and non-point source pollution and to assess water quality. Watershed managers then plan to use the models to evaluate the consequences of various management activities including water right purchases, river restoration, conservation, septic tank conversions and buffer strips) and their impacts on water quality on the watershed. Based on the modeling results, potential non-point and point source trades are being developed for the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility (TMWRF). In addition, watershed managers are evaluating the cost-effectiveness of point and non-point source trades as they relate to the beneficial uses of the river.

The case in Mexico City offered an opportunity to observe the advantages, and disadvantages of gradualist reform. Unfortunately, the authors find that the long-term nature of an incremental approach does not match well with the generally shorter-term horizons of elected politicians. Difficult decisions in implementation are left to later years, which pushes potentially unpopular actions onto the shoulders of future administrations, while allowing the current government to claim credit for instituting reform. The reform planned - and implemented - was not designed to tackle the city's most serious water problems, including over-consumption, and waste. And reform did little to change residential consumers' incentives to conserve water. Over-exploitation of the aquifer has been a problem since at least the 1930s. Mexico City is built on a series of drained lakebeds, and the land is soft, and prone to settling, or subsiding, as the aquifer is depleted. Several areas of the city center have sunk by over two meters in the past decade alone. And by virtue of its location, and elevation, the city's alternative water sources are expensive. The need for change is stark, but the power to undertake reform to tackle broad problems of resource management in the city, and surrounding areas, lies outside the jurisdiction of the Federal District, with the federal government. Such external funding of major supply projects, weakens the incentives for conservation. Reform reduced the increasing rate of over-exploitation of the aquifer, but partly by simply failing to meet demand. Reform to provide more equitable, and sustainable water delivery, must focus on improving the efficiency of operations, on substantially reforming the way water resources are priced, and allocated, and, on the design, management, and pricing of wastewater services. Federal subsidies for new production must be reduced, prices for system operators, and consumers must rise, and more must be invested in the treatment, and storage of wastewater - all of which requires strong political leadership.

In most countries, the state owns the water and hydraulic infrastructure, and public officials decide who gets water rights, how the water is to be used, and how much will be charged for its use. The authors of this paper compare administered systems of water allocation with a system of tradable water rights, and argue that water allocation by administrative edict has resulted in costly, large-scale inefficiencies in the supply and use of water, even with an adequate institutional framework. Secure property rights, on the other hand, have been shown to have a powerful positive effect on investment and efficiency, although only a few countries have tried to take advantage of the allocative efficiencies of a market to assign water resources among users. The authors argue that in order to ensure implementation of an effective water market system, attention should be paid to: (i) ensuring stakeholder participation in designing and implementing the new legislation; (ii) deciding on new rules for the initial allocation of rights and for how new rights should be allocated; (iii) establishing a public registry and block titling; (iv) setting up or strengthening water user associations; (v) protecting against the development of potential monopolies; (vi) ensuring that trades do not infringe on the water rights of existing users; and (vii) establishing appropriate environmental laws.

tion has largely occurred in the last decade and parallels the transition from water development to an era of water reallocation. Hence, we have papers today by Charney and Woodard; and Howe, Lazo, and Weber that focus on the local economic impacts of water transfers out of agriculture, while Colby argues water markets fail to address public goods and externalities and that the costs imposed by state water right transfer policies help close the gap between private and social costs and actually improve water allocation patterns. The Colby paper is provocative, well written, and contains important empirical data on transactions costs. Colby's hypothesis is personally appealing because I believe that water markets fail not only because of physical externalities of return flow interdependencies, to pecuniary externalities of secondary economic impacts, and to public good aspects of instream uses, but also because water markets fail to meet the competitive market requirements of complete information, homogenous product, and atomistic, profit-maximizing participants (Gardner). Thus, true, functioning water markets are rare. Instead, voluntary, negotiated transfers are the rule, aided in places by market-like entities. Although many constraints on water transfers were purposefully developed to address perceived market failures, two other thoughts emerge. First, the implicit notion in Colby's paper that large transaction costs are inherently good should be dispelled. Administrative efficiency remains a policy goal even if the inefficiencies convey a positive externality. Excessive delays, tedious ase-by-case analysis, and expensive legal osts can be streamlined. For instance, Idaho presumes the consumptive use for irrigation to be th amount required to grow alfalfa in the region, thus eliminating lengthy arguments over historic consumptive use. In contrast, water marketing in Idaho is needlessly penalized by an dministrative rule that water rightholders who rent to downstream users from the Upper Snake Water Bank lose priority in refilling their reservoir space vis-d-vis equal rightholders who use their water to irrigate their lands. Although compensation of damages is not a required use of Pigouvian tax revenues, it would certainly be preferred to investment in bureaucracy or litigation. Colby should more carefully differentiate between those procedures designed to correct market failures versus legal or administrative flaws in the transfer system. Colby's implicit assumption of a competitive market structure was another concern. Rarely do many buyers and sellers act in a local water market at the same time. Marketing activity often accelerates for a time to accommodate the water

I. INTRODUCTION Established on September 7, 1916 "for Rocky Boy's Band of Chippewas and ... other homeless Indians,"(1) the Rocky Boy's Reservation is home to over 3,000 Tribal members. The Reservation's annual population growth rate is in excess of three percent.(2) The Reservation has an estimated seventy percent unemployment. Forty-nine percent of the population lives below the poverty line.(3) Although economically dependent on agriculture and ranching, the Reservation's irrigable land receives only twelve inches of precipitation per year.(4) Water right settlement negotiations began in 1992 among the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy's Reservation, the State of Montana and the United States as part of the state-wide adjudication of water rights. The State held an initial public meeting to inform off-Reservation(5) water users of negotiations at which several hundred citizens expressed concern that the process could not effectively consider their needs. A few expressed their desire for termination of the Reservation and their belief that government representatives were part of an undefined conspiracy. On January 9, 1997, the Tribal Council of the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy's Reservation passed a resolution approving the water rights compact between the Tribe and the State of Montana, thus settling the Tribe's claims to water within the State of Montana. The Compact passed the Montana Senate on a 50-0 vote, and the Montana House of Representatives on a vote of 91-8. Despite Rocky Boy's Reservation location in an area that has experienced fractious race relations for over 100 years, it received the broad-based support of the Tribe, off-Reservation irrigators on all drainages shared with the Reservation, including downstream irrigators on the heavily used Milk River, surrounding communities, local legislators, county commissioners, and rural water users who, as an outgrowth of the Compact, have joined with the Tribe to solve the drinking water quality and supply problems in the region as a whole. On April 14, 1997, Montana Governor Marc Racicot signed the Compact into State law.(6) The United States Department of the Interior ("Interior") opposed the Compact, despite involvement in the negotiations.(7) Some individuals regarded the federal opposition as a failure of the United States to fulfill its trust responsibilities. Others saw the federal stance as symptomatic of a breakdown in the federal process for participation in negotiations to settle Indian reserved water rights.(8) To most observers it is merely another example of the inability of Interior to effectively participate in the negotiation of Indian water rights settlements under the rigid, and to some, inappropriate guidelines set forth in the Criteria and Procedures for Negotiation of Water Rights Settlements.(9) Furthermore, Congress has not ratified a single Indian Water Rights Settlement during the Clinton administration. The failure of the federal government to effectively participate in and support settlement discussions calls into question its ability to fulfill its role as trustee to the many Indian Tribes still struggling to settle their water rights.(10) This paper is an exploration of the Compact, the process that led to this historic agreement, and the breakdown in the federal participation. II. THE LEGAL MEASURE OF RESERVED WATER RIGHTS ASSOCIATED WITH INDIAN RESERVATIONS Allocation of water for use on private land and on public land that has not been reserved for a specific purpose is governed, in general, by state law.(11) However, the federal government may reserve waters under federal law and, in doing so, exempt them from appropriation under state law.(12) In 1908 the United States Supreme Court held that the federal government reserved water by implication when it reserved land for the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation as water was necessary to fulfill the agricultural purposes of that Reservation. …

This paper addresses the basic question: under what conditions are user organizations most effective in managing water systems? The first part examines the conditions under which sustainable water user associations (WUAs) can be fostered in the irrigation sector. The second part deals with water and sanitation users' associations (WASAs) in the domestic water supply and sanitation sector. Key external factors and internal structure for WUAs, as well as conditions for partnership with the government agency are identified. Sustainable associations in irrigation require a supportive policy and legal environment, and strong incentives for farmers, with particular attention to financial viability. Well defined roles, rights and responsibilities and incentives for agency staff are crucial for the success of WUAs. The need for agency reorientation to deal with user interests is emphasized. Benefits from participation and specific roles of WASAs must be identified in the country's policy and institutional context. Ultimately, the appropriate institutional arrangement between the government agency, the users, and their associations must meet the objective of improved and cost effective water services.

Historically, the United States set aside land from the public domain for federal purposes such as parks and national forest without taking the actions necessary to establish a water right under state law. It also negotiated treaties with American Indian Tribes that failed to address the question of a water supply for the lands set aside for the tribe. The doctrine of reserved water rights is based on the contract law theory that the federal government intended to reserve adequate water for itself when it set aside land for federal purposes, even though it did not say so expressly in the document setting aside the land (1). Likewise, when an Indian tribe reserved some of its land for itself while ceding the rest to the United States by treaty, this doctrine recognizes that the tribe must have intended to reserve some waters for itself, to make the land it reserved useable. The United States Supreme Court first recognized a reserved water right in the 1908 case of “Winters v. United States”. Keywords: prior appropriation; riparian; winters; McCarran Amendment; practicably irrigable acreage (PIA); Pueblo rights; time immemorial