Moving Waters: The Legacy of Buy-and-Dry and the Challenge of Lease-Fallowing in Colorado's Arkansas River Basin

摘要

Throughout the American West, voluntary transfers of water rights from agricultural users to municipal utilities have become more common as a strategy to meet the water needs of a growing population within a limited supply.;This study examines two neighboring transfers performed under different legal mechanisms through semi-structured interviews with local participants. These interviews addressed the impacts of water transfers in the subjects' communities, their motivations for participating, and the role of intermediaries in the transfer process.;The study finds that traditional water transfers can create long-lasting damages in rural areas, and that motivations for buying and selling water will concentrate rather than broadly distribute transfer effects, making the future of water reallocation highly concerning. The study finds that replacing objectionable transfers with new legal mechanisms faces some municipal opposition as well as systemic challenges, and that the role of intermediaries in the local water market is as yet unclear.