Australian-style Water Reforms to Colorado

River Basin edges closer to its first ever officially declared shortage, expert is calling on policy makers to adopt Australian-style water reform to cope with looming shortages

The Colorado River traces a path from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, through Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, before crossing into Mexico.

Recently, Washington-based environmental group American Rivers named it as America's mostendangered river system.

For Colorado State University senior water and climate research scientist Brad Udall, many of the problems with the management of water in the CRB come from the "antiquated" First in Time, First in Right system, under which owners of water rights that have held them longest are the last to have allocations cut off, regardless of how they are using the water.

Mr Udall has visited Australia a number of times, at one time being the South Australian water department's visiting scholar.

"Australia has used water markets to minimise economic costs during droughts and we need to move toward water markets here," he said.

"It has been very painful to get that in place and historically the powers that be don't like it, and they feel like it does too much damage to existing interests."

Australia's water reforms were born out of crisis, which Mr Udall believes is not too far away for the CRB.

But he says a pre-existing framework of "shared risk" in the Murray-Darling Basin meant the introduction of water markets in Australia was easier than it will be in the USA.

Source: ABC

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Taxonomy

• Environment
• Water Resources
• River Basin management