Farm406

57 farm406 I was thinking about water rights recently because I saw some ads objecting to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes–Montana Water Compact. e CSKT Water Compact is an agreement between the Tribes, the State of Montana, and the federal government to sele disputes over water rights in and around the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. Essentially, the Tribes have given up most of their claims to water rights in exchange for more certainty around the ones they retain. (e Compact was the product of bipartisan negotiation involving Senators Daines and Tester. It was approved by the Trump and Biden administrations and ratified by Congress, the Montana Legislature, and the CSKT. It must now be adopted by the Montana Water Court, but while I'm not an expert in water law, it sounds like only some kind of extraordinary new information would be able to stop it at this point.) I won't go into the details of the Compact, but it's a chance to explain why economists generally see efforts to clarify water rights as good for society overall – and why some people still oppose individual selements. e truck story shows how much we take the basic assumptions underlying a well-functioning market economy for granted. Ownership is clearly defined: when you buy a car, you register it with the country and receive a title. Property rights are reliably enforced: if someone steals your car, law enforcement officers will try to find it and return it to you. If there is ever a dispute, it gets seled by a fair justice system. Most importantly, the fact that we all have confidence in these government institutions means that they are rarely needed: 99.99% of the time, everyone accepts that your truck is yours, and my car is mine. Water rights aren't nearly as secure. is is partly because water itself is slippery: it's a lot harder than a car to measure, store, and tell yours apart from others. (ough once, my friend and I accidentally got into someone else's Toyota Camry because it was the same color as his, parked next to his, and his key worked on it!) But it's also because, across the West, we haven't invested in the kinds of record-keeping, monitoring, and enforcement systems that would be necessary to give water users the kind of certainty we take for granted when it comes to vehicles, houses, and land. As a result, water resources are too oen a chaotic mess of uncertainty, arguments, litigation, and political bales. Farms and ranches, developers, water utilities, and government agencies must spend their time and energy thinking about water conflicts instead of focusing on the main things they care about. ey have to pay water lawyers for years-long court bales. Worse, uncertainty can hamper investment and wise decisions about the future. If you aren't sure whether you'll get the water you think you're entitled to, you might not move forward with that purchase you've had your eye on. All of this has real economic costs and could be considered a deadweight loss in economics terminology. So, any efforts to resolve disputes, codify water rights, and reduce uncertainty can bring big benefits to everyone involved (and maybe the broader economy too). Since 1979, Montana has conducted a statewide adjudication in which water rights are formalized and recorded. One study found that a similar adjudication in Idaho, conducted between 1987 and 2014, increased the state's agricultural output by $250 million per year. e CSKT Water Compact could be considered another piece of the effort to reduce deadweight loss around water rights. By quantifying and officially recognizing CSKT water rights and creating new streamlined procedures for resolving disputes, the hope is that the Compact will reduce future litigation and bring more certainty and predictability to all water users. So why do some people still oppose selements like the Compact? Probably because even if clarifying water rights and resolving ongoing disputes is efficient – meaning that it benefits society overall – it doesn't mean that every individual water user benefits from it. ere may be some water users who find themselves with lower-priority water rights than they had before. ere also may be some users who did not, in fact, hold secure water rights but were hoping for a more favorable selement – they actually preferred the uncertainty. is is why policymaking is so hard – it's rare to find a solution that makes everyone involved beer off.

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