This article examines the relationship between water rights priority and the value of use for rights defined by prior appropriation, and tests whether this relationship is different for rights that have been transferred from their original locations to new locations, versus those that have not. We develop an empirical model using data for agricultural irrigation water rights and show that for transferred water rights, more senior (higher-priority) rights are reallocated from lower to higher-valued agricultural uses. For water rights that remained unchanged, we found that priority order and potential profitability, as indicated by land characteristics, are not well aligned.

 
Lee, G.-E., Rollins, K., and Singletary, L. 2020, The Relationship between Priority and Value of Irrigation Water Used with Prior Appropriation Water Rights, Land Economics, 96(3): 384-398
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Loretta Singletary
Loretta Singletary
 

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Water for the Seasons

Water for the Seasons (WftS) is a program that partners scientists with community water managers and water right holders in the Truckee-Carson River System (TCRS), to explore new strategies and solutions for dealing with extreme climate events such as droughts and floods.