Legal and administrative controls on the transfer of water in Arizona

Abstract

A number of statutory and administrative regulations by the federal and state governments and by water distributing organizations inhibit the formation of an unrestrained market for property rights in water in Arizona. This thesis was undertaken in order to examine the hypothesis that relaxing these restrictions would lead to increased economic efficiency in the use of water. In order to satisfy this objective, the relevant state and federal statutes and administrative regulations were reviewed, and a field survey of major irrigation distributing agencies was undertaken. The field survey, designed primarily to determine what regulations with respect to water transfer exist in irrigation water distributing agencies, permitted the collection of considerable other information concerning the organization and operation of these agencies. This additional information is also reported in the thesis. The conclusion from the analysis are that given the present ground water law, present cost of alternative supplies of ground water, and the physical cost of transferring water, the evidence does not indicate that any great increase in economic efficiency would follow from alternation of present procedures.