One of our countries greatest water challenges is financing:
- The repair of existing infrastructure,
- Building new conveyance infrastructure,
- Well construction or deepening and operation and maintenance of disadvantaged community water supplies and
- Paying for new groundwater management.
Our current system of economics and governance does not provide a means to fully support these improvements.
An up and coming water management approach for the United States is a water resource sharing plan that unbundles riparian and appropriated water rights into shares, allocations and water use approvals. Verification of applied beneficial water use of actual waters that are available any given year can be creatively and quickly transferred, especially during times of scarcity.
This method blends well with traditional water doctrines, generates funding for water projects, optimizes actions that produce sustainable water supply conditions and adds certainty to water users.
Go to the Operation Unite Resource page, scroll down to Links for Water Management Strategies and Ideas Professor Michael Young’s ideas for California.