Evolving Water Institutions in an Urbanizing West: Discussion

There is little in either the Vaux or the Young paper with which I seriously disagree. This general agreement among the two authors, myself, and I believe even among most members of the western U.S. water establishment is a measure of how "water problems" in the West seem to be working themselves out. The major battles between states over water allocation that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s have gradually been reduced to rather minor economic and legal haggling over matters of interstate commerce (e.g., the New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, dispute). Fights over massive dam building and water delivery projects have faded as all but the most outrageously uneconomic water sources have been developed. It has become almost impossible for academics to infuriate the politicians and citizenry of the West, as Young and I did in 1967, simply by suggesting moves toward economic efficiency in water use and development (Young and Martin). When even the western governors announce, as they did after their recent 1986 conference, that the states should move toward water markets to solve their expected future demand problems, one knows that there is little left for academics to say. As an academic, one might even wonder if he is still on the "right" side! My minor disagreements with Vaux are mostly over his characterization of the current situation rather than with his ultimate conclusion that in the West "the problem appears to be one of altering institutions which promote the underpricing of water and tend to lock water into existing uses." I could hardly disagree with that conclusion since it is the same conclusion that Young and I reached in 1967 and have been repeating ever since. I argue that institutions are evolving as demand for water grows, and, except in isolated areas within some western states, water problems do not really "loom" as Vaux suggests. Vaux states that "the current picture of western water resources. . . . is one characterized by increasing physical scarcity and use patterns that are overwhelmingly dominated by the agricultural sectors." To the extent that groundwater is being mined, one can say that the total physical quantity of water is becoming more scarce. Physical scarcity may indeed become a problem in urban areas such as Tucson, Arizona, where a rapidly growing population is depleting the aquifer over which the city is built (Martin et al. 1986). But in most areas where water use is overwhelmingly dominated by the agricultural sector, or by a nearby agricultural sector, the physical scarcity problem may well solve itself as increasing groundwater pumping costs induce decreased irrigation. It is economic scarcitynot physical scarcity-that is likely to be the major future water problem (Kelso, Martin, and Mack). As Vaux suggests in his section on water demand, the quantity of irrigation water to be demanded for agriculture is unlikely to grow. I suggest that it is more likely to decline as water costs increase substantially in the future. Vaux comments that where groundwater is mined, the associated decline in water tables will lead to higher extraction costs. While that obviously is true, the water table may cease to decline in areas where agricultural use tapers off. This already is happening in some of the groundwater areas of Arizona (Bush and Martin). But it is not necessarily the areas of deepest pumping lift where this is occurring. Energy costs have far more effect on production costs than does depth to groundwater. In Arizona, some of the deepest pumping areas have the lowest pumping costs, and some of the shallowest areas have the highest. Energy subsidies, both for groundwater and for surface water transportation, are the important variables, rather than depth to water or transportation distance (Bush and Martin). William E. Martin is a professor of agricultural economics, University of Arizona.