The problem with water pricing

...in short, is that crazy-ass stuff like this is all too likely:

But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams, the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those waterways.

What Holstrom does is called rainwater harvesting. It's a practice that dates back to the dawn of civilization, and is increasingly in vogue among environmentalists and others who pursue sustainable lifestyles. They collect varying amounts of water, depending on the rainfall and the vessels they collect it in. The only risk involved is losing it to evaporation. Or running afoul of Western states' water laws.

Those laws, some of them more than a century old, have governed the development of the region since pioneer days.

"If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to someone else," said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado Water Congress. "We get into a very detailed accounting on every little drop."

Welcome, Coloradan environmentalists, to the reality of water privatisation. The people of Cochabamba, Bolivia, can fill you in on the rest.

Comments

[Lisa Simeone]

I wrote a long, detailed op-ed on this for the Baltimore Sun back in 2003. It was spitting into the wind.

Even though stories such as this one from the LA Times, and similar, increasingly common ones (Montana sues Wyoming, saying excessive water use is leaving 2
rivers dry downstream; Tri-state water rights fight lands before U.S. appeals court; Maryland, Virginia clash over Potomac; Where a Lake Is Life Itself, Dam Is a Dire Word; A River Diverted, the Sea Rushes In; A Province Is Dying of Thirst, and Cries Robbery; etc. etc. etc.), people just don't get it and won't get it until it happens in their own backyard. Which, of course, it already is parts of this country -- Georgia, Alabama, Florida, the entire Southwest, most of the West, and around the world.

But at least the Cochabambans won their particular battle. At least for the time being.

[ail]

All water on Earth is connected, and when we take it in one place we take it everywhere, from persons, wildlife, the soil, the air over neighboring regions and numerous physical and chemical processes. It doesn't matter if that water is pumped from the ground, flows in streams or falls from the sky, it's interconnected. Having said that, did Holstrom take away from public water agencies and others who bought water rights, or was she taking back what they took from her? These are probably not even the right questions. Our whole way of thinking on water is going to have to change. There will be a lot of "teh stoopid" and a whole lot of pain along the way.

[BP in MN]

I don't see that this is an issue with water pricing or water rights generally, so much as with a particular stupid implementation. You need to define water rights and allocate them in some fashion, otherwise you'd see rivers diverted entirely with disastrous consequences for the environment and downstream users.

Now, if your argument is that water pricing systems will inevitably be designed so as to advantage large, industrial users, I might agree with you. Then again, I might not; I think that has tended to be true regardless of whether the water rights system has been based on pricing or not. On the gripping hand, if you're arguing that people need to pay more attention to this issue and make noise so there's a chance we get a system that protects small-scale, sustainable users, then I agree wholeheartedly.

[joel hanes]

Major John Wesley Powell foresaw the problems that limited water would bring if the arid Western territories were to be populated. He suggested that political boundaries should. where possible, follow watershed divides and comprise complete drainages -- the State of Northe Platte, say, or the State of Upper Missouri, Skunk River County, Red Creek township -- so that the disposition of water would be decided by those who had it.

Instead, boosters and dominionists drew the state and county lines as vast rectangles, in defiance of similarities and differences in topography, economy, and history -- and ignoring the necessities of water supply in a dry land.

See West of the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner for more.

[Crissa]

Ugh, farmers and ranchers taking the water from the fish is bad enough... Now they want to take stormwater from my roof as well?

What, should I be fined for putting my plants out in the rain, as well?

[Crissa]

Admittedly, the law says 'the water shall be permitted unimpeded without collection to the ground and through streams' which means you can't put out big plastic tents and keep the ground dry. The law goes on about how you aren't allowed to dam up streams or keep it at ground level.

However, that law literally means that your house is violating law by keeping the ground it sits upon dry, if read the way they want it to. It also means in Colorado it's illegal to sandbag your house vs flash flooding.

[litbrit]

What Crissa said. That is some seriously silly and ill-considered legal language; in fact, if I were a conspiratorial sort, I'd say it was almost begging to be challenged in court and struck down. Surely we all want to conserve and protect the water supply--which does indeed belong to every creature on the planet and is indeed interconnected--but teh stoopid would seem to be piling up already, and we've only just begun.

[Stephen]

Water rights in the West and the laws written around them have been tested in the courts many times. The rights were granted/purchased and the laws written according to the best understanding of how things work at the time, which may have been 75, 100 or more years ago.

The real problem out West is that developers are given just as many green lights to build as they are anywhere else, and with just a little thought given to the consequences. If I was a rancher or farmer sitting on a 100-year-old water lease, with all the attempts to take that water having such a lease would entail, I'd worry about how many people are capturing rainwater as well.

Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, California - they all have population centers that are simply unsustainable in the long run. Arizona has diverted almost every free-flowing drop of water in the state for agricultural use and human consumption. Las Vegas is draining Lake Mead, Denver is a major city in the rain shadow of the Rockies, and there's a 350-mile canal that takes water from Northern California, through the central valley all the way to Los Angeles.

There's too many people living there and too much desert agriculture. The best way to handle is probably to put a surcharge on the water bill of new residents and businesses, making the Southwest a less desirable place to live. But that will of course never happen. Instead we'll just need to wait until the water system completely collapses and people move away, essentially as refugees.

[joel hanes]

until the water system completely collapses and people move away

or die.
of course, that could never happen here.

[Crissa]

Stephan, the only reason lake mead is draining is because there has been les rainfall in the last 50 years than in the previous 100. That becomes a problem for an already burgeoning water fight.

At least in California we don't take water from deserts. Northern California still floods fairly often, so we pump that water to hold it and use it in the lean years. But if global warming is going to not drop snow in the mountains, we just won't have water period, whether in the wet areas or dry. Which is the only reason it'd be unsustainable.

Each house plopped down in a watershed should be accompanied with a limit on how much sq footage of water can be diverted. Right now, they're just pretending that well water and rainwater aren't connected, which is silly. Admittedly, if you own water rights to a 100 acres and there's 100 homes there, you're going to be pretty pissy, but really, you ought to be pissy in the first part because that stormwater is going to be filled up with the effluent from over 200 cars, 100 dogs, and 100 lawns. Worrying about diverting the water that's on the roof or falls in someone's garden is really going pretty far.