The News Review:

- Area Surface Water Supply Nearly Gone Supplier Says
- Chilean Town Withers in Free Market for Water
- ur View: Water policy should be airtight
- ur state needs a growth cap

Area Surface Water Supply Nearly Gone Supplier Says
MSNBC
“The reservoir’s level is so low we are unable to provide water consistently to the water treatment plant and we are unable to pull water from the Alafia River or the Tampa Bypass Canal” said Tampa Bay Water spokeswoman Michelle Robinson. The agency is asking everyone to cut back in every way possible from repairing leaky toilets and faucets to shortening showers and only watering lawns when it is absolutely necessary. Story continues below ?advertisement |.
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Chilean Town Withers in Free Market for Water
New York Times
Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile experts say where water rights are private property not a public resource and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment. Private ownership is so concentrated in some areas that a single electricity company from Spain Endesa has bought up 80 percent of the water rights in a huge region in the south causing an uproar. In the north agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies leaving towns like this one bone dry and withering. “Everything it seems is against us” said Bartolomé Vicentelo 79 who once grew crops and fished for shrimp in the Loa River that fed Quillagua. The population is about a fifth what it was less than two decades ago; so many people have left that he is one of only 120 people still here. Some economists have hailed Chile’s water rights trading system which was established in 1981 during the military dictatorship as a model of free-market efficiency that allocates water to its highest economic use. But other academics and environmentalists argue that Chile’s system is unsustainable because it promotes speculation endangers the environment and allows smaller interests to be muscled out by powerful forces like Chile’s mining industry.

ur View: Water policy should be airtight
Steamboat Pilot
We again agree with Ivancie on one point ? the city should not allow public benefits unrelated to water to fill the requirements of a water dedication policy. But it would be wrong to focus too strictly on water rights when the city has ample resources it can develop to meet future demands. Steamboat Springs has enough water to serve the community for decades to come according to the recently adopted Steamboat Water Supply Master Plan. The city therefore would be prudent to allow a water dedication policy to acquire funds for developing the city?s resources including water rights on the Elk River and in Stagecoach Reservoir. Also strictly requiring developers to pursue water rights for every proposed annexation could indeed as some have cautioned create a water market in the Yampa Valley that would threaten agricultural land ? the largest source of senior water rights in the area. ne only has to glance at disappearing farmlands on the Front Range to see the potential impacts of an active water market and rapidly growing communities. Boulder lawyer Fritz Holleman the city?s water attorney with the Boulder firm Porzak Browning & Bushong is working on a draft policy for City Council which could next address the issue in April.

ur state needs a growth cap
Los Angeles Daily News
The problem we face is man-made – not nature-made. There is too great a demand for the amount of water available either locally or imported from elsewhere. Los Angeles once had an adequate water supply. In the 1880s Frederick M. Shaw Southern California’s forgotten dreamer predicted that the water resources available in the San Gabriel Mountains would supply enough power to industrialize all of Los Angeles. But Shaw didn’t anticipate the rapid growth of population industry and agriculture. Very quickly the water resources were insufficient to meet the needs of growing communities.