Smoothing the Water Flow

Water marketing is somewhat the rage in California these days. At least there is plenty of talk about water marketing. The idea is relatively simple: Some people and agencies have more water on hand than they need at the moment. Others have greater demand than supply. Water marketing is supposed to bring supply and demand together, with the general result of more efficient use of the state’s water resources.

In the past half-dozen years various new state laws have been enacted to encourage such voluntary transfers while protecting the water rights of the “seller” or lessor. But whenever there is talk of water marketing there also is talk of the institutional barriers that inhibit water marketing--barriers encrusted with a century of water-rights laws, regulations, procedures, court decisions and tradition.

One of the barriers actually is more of a big ditch. It is the lack of an institution that can serve as a clearinghouse for water transfers--a classified-ad page or a flea-market listing of who has water to sell, who wants water and how to get it legally from Point A to Point B.

Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento) thus has proposed Assembly Bill 3351, which would create an Office of Water Marketing within the state Department of Water Resources. The office would publish a water-marketing guide, match buyers with sellers and study the legal, economic and environmental consequences of such transfers. It also could decide whether the state ought to buy available water to use for the best interests of the state, such as maintaining a critical fishery.

There will be some resistance to Isenberg’s bill from those who fear that the water-marketing concept will undermine traditional water rights. But the reality of the 1980s is that water demands are likely to shatter tradition, either with an Office of Water Marketing or without one. Things would flow much smoother with one.