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I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I other water rights. Increasingly there also are protections for other values of water, so- called third party interests, in the change of water right process. Perhaps because quantities of water are not simply available for purchase at some known market at the time and place of need there is a tendency to hold onto water use entitlements (and to divert the water because of the "use it or lose it" aspect of prior appropriation law). Similarly, for those foreseeing increased water demands in the future there is a tendency to acquire water rights in advance of the need to assure the availability of the water. In an arid environment, water is opportunity: those who control the resource control the opportunities. In such a setting there is an understandable desire to obtain and hold onto that control. Water marketing through the permanent transfer of water rights serves at least some of the need for more flCXlbility in the use of western water. But there are some serious limitations associated with this single approach. Given the transaction costs mentioned above, transfers of water rights for use in a different location often involve a large quantity of water. TypicaI1y this means that a major share of the water use entitlements to the water supply for an irrigation area are purchased, with the irrigated lands taken permanently out of production. The adverse local economic effects of such large-scale transfers can be substantial, prompting increased resistance to permanent water transfers in some instances. The choice facing the irrigator in a system from which water rights are being purchased is, in most cases, either to sell and go completely out of fanning or not to sell and to attempt to stay in agriculture.- There are no other real alternatives. The choice facing the water purchaser often is to purchase large blocks of water rights (perhaps including the lands on which they are used) to justify the transaction costs or to attempt to develop new supplies of either surface or ground water. More and better choices are needed, both for buyers and sellers! Water banks are emerging as one important way in which greater flCXlbility can be developed in the water allocation systems of the West. This general mechanism, which "This point is developed at greater length in Teresa A. Rk:c and Lawrence J. MacDonnell, "Agricultural to Urban Water Transfers: An Assessment of the Issues and Options," Nalurill Resources Law Center (1993). 1-3