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<br />Water markets can mean an end to water shortages <br /> <br />Page 8 of27 <br /> <br />result, over 17,000 miles of Montana streams, most <br />of which flow through private lands, were opened to <br />public access. Farmers and ranchers were not happy <br />with the decision, but they are even more fearful <br />that the next step will be to use the public trust <br />doctrine to mandate instream flows by reducing <br />irrigation diversions. <br /> <br />The federal reserved rights doctrine has a similar <br />effect on water rights. Since Winters v. United <br />States/5..) a 1908 Supreme Court case, courts have <br />upheld water rights claims for Indian reservations, <br />national parks, national forests, and other federal <br />lands. According to the doctrine, when the United <br />States government reserved vast tracts of land in the <br />West, it implicitly reserved to itself any <br />unappropriated water that was needed to fulfill the <br />purposes for which the land was set aside. <br />Unfortunately, the Winters decision was vague <br />about the quantity of water reserved. This has <br />created a cloud on water rights claimed by <br />individuals under state law. <br /> <br />Federal Water Subsidies <br /> <br />"If state regulations and court decisions were not <br />enough to stifle water markets, federal water <br />subsidies complete the task. Starting with the <br />Reclamation Act of 1902, the federal government <br />began to subsidize construction and operation of <br />massive water storage and delivery projects. The <br />primary goal of the reclamation program was to <br />convert arid lands into farmland through irrigation, <br />and the early twentieth-century Progressives pushed <br />the program as a means to encourage settlement of <br />the West. Irrigation would foster small family farms <br />in keeping with the Jeffersonian ideal of an agrarian <br />society (Mayhew and Gardner 1994). Given these <br />goals, it is not surprising that the projects provided <br />water at subsidized prices. <br /> <br />Though the Reclamation Act opened the floodgate <br />for federal water projects, it took the New Deal to <br />get the water flowing. Through the Tennessee <br />Valley Authority, the Public Works Administration, <br />and the Columbia Basin Project, the federal <br />government built hundreds of dams for flood <br />control, irrigation, and hydropower production. <br /> <br />http://www . perc.org/publications/policyseries/priming_ full. php ?s=2 <br /> <br />9/12/2006 <br />