Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: A free market in water

Secretary Norton's indolent response is hardly adequate

Interior Secretary Gale Norton clearly hopes to avoid getting drawn into squabbles between the individual Colorado River states over reallocation of precious water resources after five years of record drought.

That's understandable -- but no longer acceptable. Didn't Harry Truman once say that the kitchen should be occupied only by someone who can stand the heat?

Lake Mead is now down to 55 percent of capacity. Any substantial additional drawdown will create a drought emergency. At that point, if the states have not reached other agreements, the federal government would presumably revert to the original 1922 compact -- drawn up in the days when a horse could lie down and take a midday nap undisturbed in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard -- which calls for Nevada's 300,000-acre-foot allocation to be trimmed by 4 percent.

But while such planning "may have made sense 80 years ago in an agricultural setting, it makes no sense today," argues Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy.

Instead, Ms. Mulroy wants to buy Colorado River water from willing California and Arizona farmers.

"I see it as the drought solution now," says Ms. Mulroy, who argues there is precedent for such an interstate transfer between willing parties. Arizona already stores unused river water on Nevada's behalf, creating that usable precedent, she says.

But Thursday, the Interior Secretary expressed doubts that Nevada could win quick approval of the plan. Reallocating the river water would require the approval of all seven Colorado River states, a massive undertaking given traditional fears that any change could cost any given state some of its current allocation.

But the problem here is the premise that end users of the water -- like Arizona cotton farmers and California melon men -- have no right to sell or exchange the water once it's been allocated to them.

While Ms. Norton is indeed being pragmatic in pointing out the difficulties if no change is made in the old distribution model, surely the first step is to acknowledge the absurdity that a major city like Las Vegas faces a potentially crippling drought emergency not because of a true shortage of water, but because of an arcane bureaucratic structure which stands in the way of Nevada buying the water she needs from alfalfa farmers who would love to sell it at the price offered.

Market sales of water and water rights are the wave of the future. They are a better, proven system that will and eventually must be allowed to work. The more quickly an indolent bureaucracy is prodded to allow the re-introduction of market pricing to allow the free movement of this vital resource to those who need it and are therefore willing to pay for it, the better.

In that context, Ms. Mulroy is correct when she says that -- while Nevada hardly expected Ms. Norton to embrace this idea without consulting the other states -- a more urgent and aggressive response is now called for.