The water that is available for beneficial use in Utah is quickly approaching full appropriation; water that has been claimed is nearing the amount that is available for use. The Division of Water Resources of the State of Utah has organized a three-part plan to "Plan, Conserve, Develop and Protect Utah's Water Resources." One of these three elements has a focus to "provide comprehensive water planning." Such planning is best achieved when current and accurate data on the uses of the state's water are available. The primary purpose of this thesis was to provide an evaluation, from data collected on various case studies across the state, on the accuracy of water rights information. The studies were selected based on land that had recently been developed from agricultural usage to residential, commercial, or other municipal uses. After identifying the accuracy of the water rights information, observations to the methods of recording water right transfers were made. A template to summarize a municipality's water rights will also be made available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-204). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The issue of gaining access to enough water in California has shaped how the state has developed and it has been one of the most important and divisive political issues for all of its residents. In a state where “75 percent of the demand for water originates south of Sacramento, although 75 percent of water supply in the state comes from north of the capital city,” the decision of who should get access to the limited supply of water is fiercely contested between opposing parties who all feel that they have a right to the water necessary to keep them alive. But with the amount of useable water slowly declining and an ever-growing population with greater demand for water, there is no easy compromise or solution that solves the problem of how water should be distributed.

Streamflow characteristics change over time as a result of water resources development and management projects, water use, watershed land use changes, and climate changes. The main objective of this thesis is to assess the significance of the impacts of human activities such as construction of reservoirs, water supply diversions, increased water use and return flows on streamflows by the recently completed Texas WAM (Water Availability Modeling) system. The major river basins in the state of Texas were selected as suitable study basins. The particular objective is accomplished by the assessment of WAM monthly and annual naturalized and regulated flows, based on using the WRAP (Water Rights Analysis Package) model, which represents the river/reservoir management model. WAM flow frequency analysis was performed for the simulated flows. The flow ratio indices developed showed the divergence of the actual flows from their natural behavior for the entire monthly flow frequency flow spectrum ranging from minimum flows to high flows. This study describes the combined effects of reservoir construction, increased water use, water resources development projects and land use changes on the river flow regime.

The allocation of water resources is typically accomplished within the framework of water allocation systems (WAS). In general, a WAS sets priorities, applies rules, and organizes responses to a range of water allocation scenarios. This research presents a comprehensive study of water allocation strategies and provides a conceptual framework of principles and guidelines for designing, assessing, implementing and supporting WAS. The voluminous compilation of international treaties and conventions, interstate compacts, intrastate administrative documentation, and scientific/engineering literature was researched in order to identify different water allocation strategies and mechanisms. From this analysis eight fundamental areas of WAS were identified: water rights, determination of water allotment, administrative systems, reservoir storage considerations, system reliability, multiple uses, instream flow requirements, and drought management. The systematic scrutiny of these eight areas at the international, interstate, and intrastate levels defined the conceptual framework for assessing WAS. The Texas experience with regard to its Water Availability Modeling system is also reviewed with particular emphasis on the application of the Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) model in supporting water allocation efforts. The Lower Rio Grande WAS was used as a case study to demonstrate how the principles presented in the conceptual framework can be used to assess water allocation issues and identify alternative strategies. Three WRAP simulation studies utilizing several components of the conceptual framework were performed in order to assess the Lower Rio Grande WAS. The simulations focused on three of the major water allocation issues of the Texas Rio Grande: reallocation among uses, instream flow requirements, and drought management. The simulations showed several deficiencies in the Lower Rio Grande WAS, particularly regarding the size of the domestic-municipal-industrial (DMI) reserve and its effect on the reliability of other uses. The simulation results suggest that water from the DMI can be liberated to be used by irrigators and to support environmental flows without affecting the reliability to municipal users. Several strategies were proposed that can potentially improve the overall efficiency of the system. Nonetheless, implementing new strategies and water allocation policies in the Lower Rio Grande WAS would require considerable changes in regulation policies.

General water rights adjudications are now taking place in Arizona. The Gila River and Little Colorado River adjudications are among the largest court proceedings ever undertaken in the United States, involving more than 78,000 water rights claims scattered over 50,000,000 acres of land. The cost of individually proving such a number of individual claims in a formal trial setting would be enormous — often greater than the water's economic worth. Also, the time required to complete such a proceeding would take decades. Consequently, alternative procedures are needed to streamline the investigations and forestall a potentially serious water resource management problem. There are an estimated 22,800 stockwatering ponds (stockponds or stocktanks) in the Gila River Basin alone, and each potentially could be tried as an individual case. If small claims such as those for stockwatering could be considered de minimis in their impact on other higher priority uses, they might be adjudicated as one class of use, thereby fore-stalling a case-by-case trial of each individual water right claim. However, a major obstacle in granting special treatment to small claims lies in demonstrating to litigants that certain small water uses do not, in fact, have a discernible impact on other downstream water right holders. This study was undertaken to quantify the actual losses to a river system from stockwatering ponds, and to compare those losses to other naturally occurring impacts on the hydrologic system. Employing a watershed model, portions of the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed at Tombstone, Arizona, an area located within the San Pedro watershed, were analyzed. Storm runoff was simulated with and without the presence of stockponds. Different storm events and storage conditions were modeled in order to measure the impact of stockpond storage under a wide range of field circumstances. This study demonstrated that the hydrologic effects of stockwatering ponds are de minimis with respect to their impact on other water users many tens or hundreds of miles downstream on the river system. Stockpond numbers, capacities, volume/surface area relationships, quantification methods, and effective retention are also evaluated. Statutes in other states are reviewed for their approach to handling stockwatering uses.

ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE

Final Report, Efficient and Equitable Solution of Indian Reserved Rights, USGS Grant #14-08-0001-G1320, June 21, 1989. / The water rights claims of many Indian reservations in the West are now under adjudication. Frequently, the parties to these adjudications acknowledge that their interests may be better served through negotiated settlements, but they lack comprehensive means for determining mutually acceptable solutions to the conflicts. The research conducted under the title of "Efficient and Equitable Solution of Indian Reserved Rights" (Project #14-08-0001-G1320) sought to 1) develop a conceptual basis for determining Indian water rights; 2) develop an analytical procedure to provide the information needed to resolve water rights conflicts; and 3) apply this analytical procedure to a test case involving the Gila River Basin in Arizona. The methodological core of the research is a set of linked models, encompassing historical, hydrologic, economic, psychological, and institutional elements of the conflict. Hydrologic, institutional, and economic analyses of conjunctive management of surface and groundwater supplies were facilitated by the use of MODSIM, a network optimization model. Data from the model enabled the investigators to construct an impact matrix, defining the effect of each possible settlement option on the goals of the parties. The preferences of the parties were elicited through social judgement analysis. Twelve settlement options were defined on the basis of knowledge of other negotiated settlements, and a final option, representing possible outcomes should the negotiation process fail, was included in the analysis. The next step was to model the possible choices available the contending parties, utilizing an n-person cooperative game framework. This analysis indicated that a set of three settlement options dominated the adjudication option for all players. Each of these included the provision of imported water in lieu of water currently being used in the basin. It is anticipated that the results of this research will be developed as a book-length manuscript by the principal investigators and the research team.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

Water is an essential element of life. On average, 60 to 70 percent of a human body mass is water . In order to perform its functions properly, it is estimated that a human body needs about 2 to 3 litres of clean water per day2. For this reason, access to adequate, clean and safe water is indispensable to achieving human well-being, and securing human freedom and dignity. Given the important role water plays in sustaining human life, enhancing human dignity, freedom and development, it has been widely submitted that access to clean water should be recognised as an inalienable right. Ironically, although water is a basic requirement for life, access to water has not been adequately proclaimed and treated as a human right, especially in domestic law. Other than the international human rights instruments, there are very few countries which have explicitly protected access to water in the national constitutions and other major pieces of legislation. Arising from this is the question of whether explicit recognition of the right to water makes a difference for people living without access to safe sources of water. The main argument persued in this study is that although explicit recognition of the right to water can make a difference in the lives of millions of people who have no access to clean sources of water, mere recognition of the right to water does not constitute a 'magic bullet' for the challenges of access to clean water. Realizing the right to water requires moving beyond mere recognition to deeper levels of commitment which includes taking appropriate measures and implementing them. Moving beyond mere recognition, in turn, requires adequate and responsive institutions through which the rights can be asserted, contested and effectuated. In this context, civil society constitutes an important component of the institutional set up through which the right to water can be effectuated. The importance of civil society in realizing the right to water lies in the fact that human rights are not just given on a silver platter, they must be asserted, sufficiently contested for, and claimed. While the deployment of a rights-based approach to issues of access to water is in its infancy stages, it is apparent from the evidence gathered in this study that the rights-based approach is weak in unlocking and hooking into the real-politik, despite its rhetorical strength. This study explores the challenges faced in implementing the right to water. Focus in the study is on processes that produce situations where the right to water is, first of all, not well recognized as a human right; and secondly, processes that lead to the right to water not being fulfilled for millions of people. What the Zambian case has revealed is that failure to ensure that people have access to clean sources of water is not solely a question of lack of or inadequate resources as the situation is often made to appear in conventional political discourse. There are multiple factors involved, including inappropriate management of processes, systems and resources, which often is a consequence of lack of political will and commitment. Given the nature of the issues under investigation, a multi-method approach, which is a combination of different research methods and strategies, has been employed. Field work for the study was conducted in three different peri-urban communities in Zambia. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.