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Dissolved mineral salts (salinity) adversely affects numerous urban and agricultural users of Colorado River water in southwestern United States and in Mexico. More than a third of the salt load is thought to be induced by drainage from irrigated lands onto highly saline groundwater deposits in the Upper Colorado Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Various public policy initiatives are proposed to induce farmers to reduce discharges of this nonpoint pollutant. Taxes on water, water conservation subsidies, and land and water rights purchases are analyzed in a linear programming framework. The allocative efficiency and the distribution of control costs and damages among irrigators, water users, and taxpayers are...
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A river basin optimization model is presented for investigating performance of alternative market institutions for water resource allocation. We show that existing demands for Colorado River water cannot be fully satisfied given mean annual flows of 13.0 million acre-feet at Lee?s Ferry. Market transfers which minimize costs to consumptive users of such shortfalls may achieve as little as 50% of the incremental benefits possible with transfers, which incorporate the economic benefits of hydropower production and reductions in river salinity. Such efficient allocations would require large transfers from existing Upper Basin consumptive users, and annual deliveries to Mexico would exceed treaty obligations. Published...
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This paper presents a summary of the findings and recommendations of the studies of severe, sustained drought reported in this special issue. The management facilities and institutions were found to be effective in protecting consumptive water users against drought, but much less effective in protecting nonconsumptive uses. Changes in intrastate water management were found to be effective in reducing the monetary value of damages, through reallocating shortages to low-valued uses, while only water banking and water marketing, among the possible interstate rule changes, were similarly effective. Players representing the basin states and the federal government in three gaming experiments were unable to agree upon...
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