Outdoor residential water use is increasingly becoming a target for urban water conservation. As western municipalities face more restricted water supplies, water providers are paying residents to take out their lawns permanently. Current programs in Southern Nevada and Los Angeles are yielding water conservation at a cost of $65,000/AF to $87,000/AF. Continue reading
Indian Water Rights: A Series on the Appropriate Cost Benefit Analysis Framework for Economic Feasibility Assessment
I. Introduction
The near lack of progress in resolving the millions of acre-feet of outstanding Federal reserved water rights claims of many Native American Tribes is a significant contributor to the perilous uncertainty that plaques the water supply-demand landscape in many regions of the western United States. This uncertainty poses a formidable constraint to the proactive and comprehensive water resource plan decision-making so particularly needed in these times of prolonged drought and widespread concern over the potential adverse hydrologic impacts of climate change. It is no surprise, therefore, that stakeholders at the local, state and federal levels are ever searching for technical and political solutions to facilitate the settlement of native water rights claims as a means to jumpstart long stalled water resource development and management action. Continue reading
Prediction Markets II: What Are Prediction Markets and Why Do They Work?
My earlier post on Prediction Markets discussed why prediction markets for the water industry. They are the next frontier in water markets—information markets to improve planning and decision-making in the face of uncertainty about legislative and regulatory actions, political change, hydrology, project operations, litigation outcomes and water prices. Currently, discussions of the future are often little more than unsubstantiated opinion. The water industry can do better. Continue reading
Whooping Crane Decision Checks Texas into Hotel California
March 11, 2013 will be a historical date in Texas water when the case The Aransas Project v. Shaw brought Texas into a new era of water resources. Federal District Judge Janis Graham Jack held that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (“TCEQ”) has failed to manage the waters of the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers to protect the endangered whooping crane. Texas will now take the journey that California has been (unsuccessfully) traveling for decades over its own Bay-Delta. Texas learned that science, economics and politics governs modern water resource management. In court, Texas water users mostly “bet the ranch” on legal doctrine.