Laserfiche WebLink
<br />ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY GAINS FROM GOING WITH THE FLOW <br />One could argue that a significant contributor to the downfall of the Communist Bloc <br />countries were institutions that failed to recognize the growing gap between what the public <br />demanded and what was being supplied. Outdated thinking caused large amounts of the <br />country's scarce resources to continually flow into defense industries, while consumers could <br />not find the basic necessities in stores. The triumph of free-enterprise is due to providing <br />incentives to move resources from old, low valued uses to new, higher valued uses in <br />response to changing consumer demand. A major exception to this principle is the allocation <br />of water, particularly in the western U.S. Despite substantial economic shifts away from an <br />agrarian economy and toward a society that has heightened concern for environmental <br />quality, water largely continues to be allocated as it was in the 1890's or 1920's. Irrigated <br />agriculture diverts upwards of 90% of the water in most western states of the U.S. The "first <br />in time, first in right" doctrine of prior appropriation and the unwillingness of many <br />irrigation districts to allow water to be traded outside the district to other uses, literally casts <br />in concrete a water use pattern increasingly at variance with current social values. In <br />particular it is at variance with a society that values fishing, rafting and protection of <br />endangered species. Even in the Spring of 1997, one western irrigation district was <br />subsidizing delivery costs of transmountain water to provide water at no cost to its members, <br />"to avoid losing excess water down the Colorado River" (NCWCD, 1997). The fact that <br />there are endangered fish on those stretches of the Colorado River, commercial rafting and <br />millions of people living in the lower Colorado Basin suggests the "use it or lose it" <br />mentality continues today. Providing water at "no charge" almost assures water being used in <br /> <br />3 <br />