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<br />water that gets swapped informally within irrigation districts from farmer to <br />farmer. <br /> <br />But don't dare call it a "market," said Michael George, chief executive of <br />Western Water Co. in the San Francisco area. His struggling company tries to <br />broker water sales across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a hydrological <br />choke point controlled by the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. <br />Bureau of Reclamation. <br /> <br />"Let's not kid ourselves that we've got a willing-buyer, willing-seller market <br />in place when we allow the state and federal government to control the <br />conveyance system and discriminate in terms of price," said George. <br /> <br />WATER INDUSTRY NOT QUITE A 'MARKET' YET <br /> <br />Brent Haddad, an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz who studies water <br />transfers in California, said he agrees that "market" isn't the right word to <br />describe what's going on in California's water industry. <br /> <br />A word hasn't been coined yet, he said. <br /> <br />"Electricity wires don't interact with society, but canals and rivers do," <br />Haddad said. "There's so much public interest involved in water transfers that <br />the way we think about markets, as individuals trading, is the wrong way to <br />think about it. It's too connected to the rest of our lives." <br /> <br />"We're not burning policy time trying to create a market," Haddad said. "We've <br />pushed aside theory, and now we're just seeing what works." <br /> <br />61 <br />