Incentives for efficient water use can help our rivers

Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF.

The urban Bay Area’s historically derived “patchwork water supply”, reported in today's San Francisco Chronicle, is one example of many in California demonstrating how our antiquated water system is so often imbalanced and unfair. Another significant example lies in the agricultural sector in the San Joaquin Valley. As is often reported, agriculture uses upwards of 80 percent of California’s developed water supply, so attention to water use in that sector is crucial to finding a solution to the State’s water woes.

During this recent drought some farms with plentiful supplies (and senior water rights) pay as little at $8 per acre-foot for water while neighboring farms with more junior water rights and thus more limited supplies must pay up to $600 per acre-foot to keep orchards alive. The results of this inequity are many: (1) farms with cheap supplies have insufficient incentives to adopt modern state-of-the art irrigation technologies, (2) farms where water is not cheap and abundant must often fallow their fields, putting people out of work and providing less food for our kitchen tables, and (3) water shortages put additional pressure to extract unsustainable supplies from the natural environment, where extinction of some fish species is a real possibility.

As we struggle to protect our rivers and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it is essential that we manage our developed water efficiently. All business people respond to price signals. Allowing and indeed encouraging those farmers with superior water rights to market a larger portion of their supplies will provide incentives to irrigate as efficiently as possible, producing more food and reducing the conflict with our rivers and streams.