9298 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

conservation and water transfers and exchanges to make more effective use of facilities as opposed to building facilities, resulting in delivering water at the lowest possible cost. You also have groundwater storage and banking programs and cooperative conjunctive use programs. You've got land fallowing and rotation and other water use reduction programs. You've got drought management allocations, again, allowing water during periods of shortage to flow to where the needs are. You've got dry-year supply option markets for increasing your reliability, and spot market purchases. And you've got surplus water management. In my opinion, our energies need to be directed at: How else, if at all, can water markets best serve the public interests in the Colorado River Basin? Now this is not a substitute for the Law of the River but it's an expanded component of it. This may not excite private marketing interests but I believe it's the right direction. It will only have value if it serves the mutual interests of all states. It cannot be a means to acquire more water at the expense of others. It's not about who produces more value from the use of the water or who has the right to prosper and who doesn't, or whose public interests have greater value. It's about serving all of our public interests. RITA PEARSON, DIRECTOR, ARIWNA DEPARTMENT OF WATER REsOURCES I want to say thank you to Dennis. I was a little worried about getting all of my comments into my time frame but Dennis took my introductory remarks. He did a terrific job and I couldn't agree more with what he said. I think he laid out a very important foundation and that is that water is, in fact, a public good. It is a public resource. It doesn't fit strictly and exclusively into a commodity type of resource. Therefore, a market as it's traditionally referred to in economic vernacular doesn't fit, per se, although a market has and will continue to exist with respect to the marketing of water supplies, but it is within a limited market context. Over the last couple of days we've heard references to perhaps a need for a new institutional tool which will allow for the movement of water intrastate and interstate. I represent the organization that has that institutional tool today and that tool is the Arizona Water Bank Authority. It was created in 1996 by the state Legislature in recognition of the need to engage in a drought mitigation program for CAP municipal subcontrac- tors. Those cities with CAP subcontracts knew that they were at risk of drought over the life of their available supply. They also knew droughts would occur more frequently as time went on. So our state said, "Let's create a water bank taking advantage of excess water supplies that are available on an interim basis." That's what the water bank is all about, taking advantage of excess water supplies on an interim basis. It in fact is a 20-year institutional mechanism acknowledging that Arizona will grow into its full Colorado River entitlement by about 2030 but during that period, we can accomplish some very important goals. The first is the municipal drought insurance program I referred to. The second is really an environmental goal of the program: groundwater recharge to restore overdrafted aquifers in the CAP service area, a critical problem for us from a water quality standpoint as well as a cost standpoint. The third is support or Indian water settlements, a recognition that Colorado River supplies could replace claims by tribal communities to local water supplies that may, in fact, have a higher value to non- Indian communities that have competing rights to those shared resources. The last goal is an interstate marketing component that has gotten so much play in the water circles the last couple of years. The bank is functional, but it is functional only to the extent of an intrastate bank today. Hopefully, within a short period of time, it will become a Lower Basin interstate banking instrument. What's important about the water bank, when you step away from it, is that it works within the existing legal system. It does not disrupt the existing legal rights to the Colorado River system. It, in fact, is a "wet water" bank. We are utilizing water supplies within the existing legal rights for the state of Arizona.,We are storing it without doing harm to any others and we are making that water supply available for uses that the public has determined are an appropriate use for water supplies. The cost aspect of this issue is important too. I think that's where it flies in the face of a private market because speculation in a private marketplace What's important about the water WATER MARKETI NG ON THE COLORADO RIVER bank, when you step away from it, is that existing legal system. it works within the - Rita Pearson SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS SEPTEMBER 1999 o