“A Strategic Environmental Water Rights Market for Colorado River Reallocation”
Monday, April 7, 2–3:30 p.m.
PACCAR 202, WSU Pullman
Philip Womble, Steven M. Gorelick, Barton H. Thompson, Jr., and J. Sebastian Hernandez-Suarez
The Colorado River system is among the world’s most overallocated basins, struggling to supply water to the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. Consequently, 90% of the basin’s native fish species are endangered, threatened, or extinct. Driven by a regional 24-year megadrought, the U.S. allocated over $4 billion for water market transactions that pay farms, cities, and industries to extract less water. We developed a novel model of how strategic water markets can restore imperiled fish habitat, integrating hydrology, ecology, economics, and water rights for the river within Colorado under future climate change. Using the model, we explore how strategically spending modest additional funds improves fish habitat compared to least-cost water-use reduction plans under various plausible current and future formal and informal water markets. We demonstrate pathways to build towards strategic water markets by prioritizing individual transactions, and we compare ecological and economic outcomes of water markets to mandatory water cutbacks under the governing 1922 Colorado River Compact. By developing a decision support tool that conveys model results to water market participants, we can inform initiatives to conserve water in the basin.
