Your article “Taking the West Forward” nailed a key
issue that typically escapes public notice: the system of water
rights in the West that gives priority to the oldest users of water
and typically requires water to be taken out of streams to be
protected as a valid use (HCN, 12/6/04: Taking the West Forward).
This system of water rights has often left cities and the
region’s streams and rivers “high and dry.”
Water-right transfers are part of the solution to the West’s
current drought, and to the long-term sustainability of life in the
arid West. Trout Unlimited’s Montana Water Project has been
working with the agriculture community to secure temporary
transfers of irrigation water rights to improve flows in trout
streams for several years.
However, Montana is among a
handful of Western states that have the flexibility to transfer an
irrigation water right to provide streamflows, and even in Montana
these transfers are currently limited to temporary arrangements.
Also, for good or ill, 100-plus years of water use has altered the
hydrology of virtually all Western watersheds. And as water is
moved around to other uses, it must be done carefully, without
injuring other water users. If change is to occur without putting a
boot on the throat of farming (or anyone else), then moving water
from one use and place to another will and must be a slow, careful
process.
Laura Ziemer, Trout
Unlimited
Bozeman, Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Be careful with water transfers.
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