By LineM1FLEReunion (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
If you're living in a city, or if you're in any situation where you're not using your land for agriculture, chances are you don't put a great deal of thought into where your water comes from. Generally, when you're buying a home, you're going to have a utility arrangement with the city you're buying it in: they make water come out of your tap when you turn it on, and you send them a certain amount of money every month.
However,
if you're looking at buying property with a water source on it, be
aware that water rights are transferred separately from land rights.
If I had an underground water source on my property, I could
theoretically sell my land to Thomas
Red, and then sell the water to Alfred Green, his bitter enemy.
As
a city-dweller myself, I do not have any water rights, though,
and therefore could not sell
any. The City of Orem owns my water, and I get it from them through
utilities. The Red/Green
feud will have to wait.
But do cities run out of water?
The
answer to this is somewhat complicated. Usable water sources only
replenish at a certain rate (dictated, generally, by nature), and so
it stands to reason that eventually we would have so many people in a
city that we'd be drinking more water than we were getting from our
source. (It's more likely that we're using it to water our crops and livestock, actually, but you take my point.) Further
complicating this idea is the fact that water replenishment rates are
inconsistent. Utah gets an average of 61.5 million acre feet of water
every year. However, after evaporation and plants have taken their
greedy share (as well as our neighbor states, who dip their hand in
Utah's water pot a little bit) we actually only have 3.3 million
available for consumption.
Oh,
an acre foot, by the way, is the amount of water it requires to cover
an acre of land in a foot of water. One acre of agricultural land
uses about four acre feet of water in a year.
The
government is charged with water appropriation, which is to say that
they express a large amount of control over who gets water rights,
and for how much money they get them. Interestingly, Washington and
Iron Counties here in Utah have overappropriated water rights due
to incorrect estimates about population growth. That
has led to a rise in price for water rights in those counties, as
well as plans being discussed to divert water from the Colorado River
or, more likely, Lake Powell.
And that's the key right there. Water rights follow the principle of
supply and demand. As more water is appropriated, the remaining
supply is scarcer, and prices generally increase. There can even be
instances where cities will tell builders of new divisions that they
must acquire their own water rights, instead of buying them directly
from the city. Just the other day I listened to the lament of a
potential homebuyer who was ruing that he couldn't find water rights
for his new place.
In these cases, it's important to remember how massive the water
sources we're talking about are, though. For example, a division
builder in Spanish Fork could potentially try to purchase water
rights from an owner in Alpine, because there's a massive water
source in this part of the Wasatch Front, so they're drawing from the
same place.
Seems small, I know, but bear in mind that bird is the size of Rhode Island. By Tanu842011 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
Truthfully, you probably don't need to worry about running out of water to drink anytime soon. If some jerk were able to convince everyone in Utah to run their taps constantly all day (or if said jerk wanted even more devastating results, they'd convince farmers to run their sprinklers all day), well yeah, that would be a problem. If you're looking into acquiring water in Iron or Washington counties, then you will want to keep an eye on the Lake Powel Pipeline idea.
Here
in Utah, though, just be responsible with your water usage, and bask
in the weird dichotomy that we have one of the highest per-capita
water usages in our little neighborhood of states, but are also, in a
way, running at a water surplus.
Note: Most of the facts for this article were drawn from this report, which is awesome.
Interesting article. Is it possible to obtain water rights while living in a city? Can people just decide to own a well and dig until they hit something?
ReplyDeleteYou most likely can purchase water rights in a city, although you might not have a reason to do so. It would be very situation-dependent.
ReplyDeleteIf you just dig into a ground well and start pumping water, you're running the risk of stealing from an established water source! The government controls allocation of water rights, and I'm not sure how they would handle a newly-discovered water-source. Good question!