Paying (More) for Water?

Todd Jarvis sent me this opinion piece from the Idaho Mountain Express. It's about a sensitive issue - paying for water. No, not for the infrastructure to provide it or the maintenance of the infrastructure. Most of us pay nothing for the actual water itself. Should we? Jon Marvel makes a case for doing so (I've not reproduced the entire article). He is the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, ID.

Marvel contends that charging for water is a way to mitigate the impact of recent state agency budget cuts mandated by Gov. Butch Otter (R-ID). He urges the legislature, "Don't Give Away Idaho's Water".

One possible area for this kind of fiscal reform is in the administration of Idaho's most precious natural resource—water.

Under current Idaho law water right holders do not pay the State of Idaho anything for that right even though the Idaho Supreme Court has affirmed that the State owns the surface and ground water within its boundaries. Every Idaho State water right establishes a point of diversion, a point of use, a season of use and the amount of water for that right, but the State charges nothing for the water.

Of course, there are costs for water users: farmers pay water districts for delivered water and may have costs for pumping water. City dwellers pay city water departments or private water companies for water but other than these costs, water is free for the taking.

One consequence of this free water policy is that the majority of the Idaho Department of Water Resources annual budget of $26,000,000 comes from the Idaho's general fund and not from water users.

Instead of this drain on public coffers and the sales tax revenues that could be supporting public education, why doesn't the State start charging all water users for the use of public water ?

Such a water charge could also encourage conservation of water by establishing a rising fee as the amount of water use increased. In this way large water users like irrigators would become accountable for their impacts that contribute to currently declining surface and groundwater flows in the Snake River Plain.

Hard times like these can lead to innovative ways to sustain important public programs like public education. The earlier we start to discuss new ways of funding critical public needs, the sooner we can help insure our children's future.

Rural (self-supplied) folks who pump their own water may balk because they generally pay more for water than city dwellers. A recent presentation (see slide 11) by colleague Jerry Schmidt shows that in Oregon, over 10 years a rural resident who pumps ground water can expect to pay about $17,000 versus about $5,200 for the city dweller. But the $17,000 figure includes $14,000 for the intitial cost of the well and pump and then $300 per year for operation (but nothing for replacement and repair), so the comparison is slightly misleading.

No one is paying anything for the water (although some municipal systems now levy a "scarcity" or "commodity" charge that purports to include the cost of the water). This needs to change. Such fees for using water should be used to support the various activities of state water resources agencies in the fields of outreach and education, and to provide funds to communities to plan/manage their own water supplies.

"Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand." -- Unknown

Comments

[David Zetland]

Hear hear! Two notes:

1) The price of water should rise and fall according to supply (wellhead, precip and snowpack).

2) The Public owns and uses, BUT some members of the public use more than others -- thus the need for scarcity charges.

[Jeffrey McLarty]

The price to tap oil sources is different, based on geography. We made a market for that...we trade rice, cotton, even weather futures. Sell it to the highest bidder, those bidders will waste less, innovate to reduce losses. In the end, there would be more to go around.

[Chris Brooks]

RE: justifying charging water rights holders for water use because the state owns the water...
Because water is characterized as a public resource either constitutionally or statutorily does not mean the state "owns" the resource. It means the "public" owns the resource but the state manages the resource on behalf of the public - i.e. the citizens of the state. This is the "public trust" notion often referred to in water law. I'm in favor of full pricing for water, which includes scarcity or commodity charges, but governments will find it difficult to charge members of the public for the right to use something the public owns.
I think it's necessary to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable water resources in this sense. Rights to renewable water (generally surface water) are usually paid for by permit fees, but not use fees, which seems correct. Rights to non-renewable water (i.e. groundwater) are often administered similarly - permit fees for water rights, especially where surface and groundwater are managed under the same legal regime, i.e. prior appropriation. But where the resource is non-renewable, implementation of fees based on amount used seems more reasonable. But again, where all water rights are managed under the same system, imposing different fees on different sources of water becomes problematic because of due process concerns and just general political difficulty. This runs entirely counter to common, scientific sense but that's the law for you.