The Wichi­ta Eagle edi­to­ri­al­izes on drought, a top­ic we’ve dis­cussed before:

This sum­mer, Kansas streams had “less vol­ume of water than at any time since records have been kept,” includ­ing the Dust Bowl years, said Steve Adams, nat­ur­al resource coor­di­na­tor for the Kansas Depart­ment of Wildlife and Parks.

More­over, many state reser­voirs are 10 to 20 feet or more below nor­mal lev­els, mak­ing them unus­able for recre­ation and threat­en­ing city water supplies.

Such prob­lems aren’t sim­ply a result of less rain­fall, Adams said; in some cas­es, through heavy use, “we’re mak­ing more demands than what the water resource can sustain.”

He con­tin­ues by explain­ing that “we need to be think­ing in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.” And the Eagle con­cludes that “If there is no water, Kansas has no future.”

The leg­is­la­ture has tak­en some good steps, enhanc­ing exist­ing pro­grams that encour­age farm­ers to retire irri­ga­tion rights, and fund­ing tech­ni­cal pro­grams to enhance the lifes­pan of exist­ing reser­voirs. But the real solu­tion has to be a change in the way water is allo­cat­ed and used.

Part of the prob­lem is the way that water is his­tor­i­cal­ly allo­cat­ed to users in Kansas and in many of the West­ern States. The Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture explains:

The right to use Kansas water is based on the prin­ci­ple of “first in time — first in right.” In times of short­age, that means the ear­li­est water right or per­mit hold­ers have first rights to use the water.

The stan­dard solu­tion to the allo­ca­tion of lim­it­ed resources (fish in the sea, graz­ing land, mine­able ores) is to cre­ate a mar­ket for the resource. Guar­an­tee­ing access to some users cre­ates an incen­tive for them to abuse the shared resource. Those with lat­er demands have increas­ing inter­ests in con­ser­va­tion as they get fur­ther from the front of the line. A mar­ket evens that inter­est. When the cost of an extra acre-foot of water varies, there’s more rea­son to con­sid­er con­ser­va­tion at key moments than if you will be guar­an­teed access to the water. 

As I under­stand the cur­rent sys­tem, peo­ple with water per­mits are allo­cat­ed a cer­tain amount of water per acre, and once they have their per­mit, are basi­cal­ly free to use any amount up to (and pos­si­bly above) that rate. Exces­sive overuse can result in pun­ish­ment, but the enforce­ment sys­tem is pret­ty unim­pres­sive.

In these sorts of sit­u­a­tions, ecol­o­gists and eco­log­i­cal econ­o­mists gen­er­al­ly pre­fer to cre­ate self-enforc­ing sys­tems, ways to incor­po­rate the costs of overuse into the dai­ly cal­cu­lus of the peo­ple overus­ing the resource. In this case, spread­ing the own­er­ship rights and oblig­a­tions more wide­ly would be a good start. Grant­i­ng users some per­cent­age of the total water out­put as opposed to a con­stant quan­ti­ty would prob­a­bly also be wise. 

In fish­eries, a lot of effort has been devel­oped to show that it’s bet­ter to reg­u­late fish­ing effort rather than total take. Con­stant effort har­vest­ing will pro­duce fish pop­u­la­tions that can still return to equi­lib­ri­um from above or below the tar­get size, sta­bly reg­u­lat­ing pop­u­la­tions. Con­stant quo­ta har­vest­ing will pro­duce an unsta­ble equi­lib­ri­um, one where any devi­a­tion away from the tar­get will rein­force itself, what Rough­gar­den and Smith liken to “bal­anc­ing a ball on a dome.” The lat­ter is clos­er to what we have in Kansas water pol­i­cy (though it’s worth not­ing that water and fish are not the same, fish repro­duce, water doesn’t).

“I’d Rather Drink Mud­dy Water” by Bil­lie (Willie Mae) McKen­zie from the album Female Chica­go Blues 1936–1947 (1936, 3:01).