Water Permitting Behavior under the 1972 Florida Water Resources Act.

A water user participating in a political process generally has to actively interact with an agent of the state when applying for water permits and water. The interaction involves contact with such agents, and possibly with other water users. Conflict could easily arise due to differing beliefs and attitudes. For example, agents of the state may assert that economic growth could destroy the aquifer (belief) and that the aquifer should be protected from destruction (attitude), suggesting a high evaluation (value) on preserving the aquifer's ability to produce water. The applicant may believe the same rate of pumping will not affect the aquifer enough to justify slowing economic growth (belief), and that at least some of the aquifer should be destroyed to insure enough economic growth (attitude). Considerable time, money, and effort may have to be expended to overcome the conflict resulting from the differing behavior, which arises from the differing beliefs and attitudes. As a result, transactions costs could be relatively high. The behavior of the agent and the applicant in any institutional setting becomes an empirical question because behavior will differ with each type of institution (laws, rules, regulations, customs, habits). We are using the term as Bromley (1989, 39) suggests, by focusing our attention on the "concept of institutions as the rules and conventions that define the choice sets from which individuals, firms, households, and other decision-making units choose courses of action." In particular, we are focusing here on the 1972 Florida Water Resources Act and the resulting administrative law and rules in place that guide the process for obtaining a consumptive use permit (CUP). The Act influences the choice sets, and thus the behavior, of both the applicant and the agents in Florida's water management districts. This paper develops a model for first improving understanding and then explaining the behavior of a water management district and of the applicants for water permits in the Southwest Florida Water Management District as a case study. We first describe the pattern and highlight the major themes of the Act and the subsequent rules and regulations which form the basic structure for the permitting process. We then describe the permitting: the act puts in place a unique process that necessitates applicants incurring more transaction costs to obtain more water. A "friction" model is proposed, with the dependent variable a measure of the success at getting more water by irrigators. The model suggests the extent to which over-requests, at a level beyond some threshold, will be honored by the district. We posit that greater differences in beliefs and attitudes between the applicant and the water management district staff! governing board cause the applicant to request a significantly greater amount of water than the district perceives is needed. We suggest a threshold level, however, below which over-requests are honored, probably to avoid conflict. Beyond the threshold level, then, belief and attitude differences cause conflict. Also, beyond the threshold we propose the irrigator can be successful with more expenditure of time, money, and effort used to overcome the conflict. We suggest behavior can only be understood by examining the underlying institutional structure and the processes encouraged by that structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]