Norman K. Whittlesey

Interruptible Water Markets in the Pacific Northwest

This paper analyzes the potential for using a market to shift water from irrigation to hydropower use in periods of low river flow in the Snake River basin of Idaho. The water could be used for irrigation in most years but in dry years would be very valuable for firming up electric power supplies. A model of crop growth and water use was utilized to estimate farmer responses and resulting farm income losses due to market-restricted irrigation water supplies. Results indicate that estimated hydropower benefits are ten times greater than estimated lost farm income, so the proposed water market should be economically feasible.

A Theoretical Analysis of Economic Incentive Policies Encouraging Agricultural Water Conservation

A conceptual model of a representative irrigated farm is formulated to study farm responses to two economic policies commonly suggested to encourage agricultural water conservation, and to characterize the hydrological and economic circumstances in which these responses provide the desired conservation. The economic policies studied are to increase the irrigators cost of applied water and to subsidize the irrigators cost of investing in improved on-farm irrigation efficiency. Comparative statics results demonstrate that increasing the cost of applied water may be a more effectual water conservation policy than subsidizing the cost of improved on-farm irrigation efficiency.

Economic Impacts, Value Added, and Benefits in Regional Project Analysis

This paper addresses five issues encountered when estimating secondary benefits in regional project analysis: (a) the correction for opportunity cost of factors used, (b) the treatment of mobile factors, (c) the effect of economies of size, (d) the role of forward linkages, and (e) the role of spatial structure of economic regions. The first four are reasons that only a small part, if any, of regional impacts can be treated as regional net benefits. The fifth is a reason that, when secondary benefits or damages do exist, their correct estimation can depend on the spatial structure of the affected areas.

The Role of Prior Appropriation in Allocating Water Resources into the 21st Century

This article demonstrates how widespread technological changes in agriculture have weakened the security of traditional appropriative water rights. Since legal protection of these rights has severely restricted the use of transfer mechanisms to reallocate water to emerging social needs, this demonstration provides a powerful and novel argument for increasing the flexibility of the prior appropriation system and operating it in conjunction with other legitimate water-allocation doctrines protecting public interests in water.

Water Policy Issues for the Twenty-first Century

Water resource management throughout the nation is looming as one of the most important political, social, and economic issues of the approaching century. While water allocation and water quality describe the issues of the past and the future, growing and changing social demands for available water, changing technologies, and outdated laws and institutions for water allocation combine to create new opportunities for the attention of economists for the next several decades. The role of economists in this

Improving irrigation efficiency through technology adoption: When will it Conserve water?

Irrigated agriculture accounts for as much as 90% of the water consumed in arid parts of the world. In these areas the availability of water for competing agriculture, domestic, industrial, and environmental uses is quite low. Since agriculture is normally the largest consumer of water, and the historical owner of water rights, it is frequently proposed that water could be made available for the other uses by increasing irrigation efficiency through investment in new irrigation technology. Unfortunately, this position is often advocated without full knowledge of how increased irrigation efficiency is achieved and the broader implications of this process. This paper will explain the physical phenomena of irrigation management and plant growth involved in changing irrigation efficiency. The paper will then examine the conditions under which such changes might conserve water use in agriculture and make more available for other uses. The paper will also demonstrate conditions in which improvements in irrigation efficiency may actually reduce water availability for other uses, particularly in periods of drought or water shortage. Irrigation return flows from inefficient irrigation systems are normally an important part of the water supply to subsequent users in irrigated river basins. In such settings the process of increasing irrigation efficiency can actually decrease instream water supplies during periods of drought when compared to use of older, less efficient technologies.

Separable Programming for Considering Risk in Farm Planning

This paper proposes use of separable programming for selecting farm enterprises which are efficient in terms of expected income and income variance. An empirical application on a croplivestock farm in the Columbia Basin of Washington is presented. The effects of removing statistically insignificant covariance terms and the error introduced by the linear approximation are explored.

Multiple Criteria Decision Making: A Case Study of the Columbia River Salmon Recovery Plan

A common problem faced by decision makers is choosing the best alternative from among many. Traditionally, such decisions in the public arena were made using benefit-cost analysis, which involves the conversion of all costs and benefits associated with a project into monetary terms. But public projects often have a variety of economic, ecological, social and political objectives, many of which cannot or perhaps should not be converted to monetary terms. In such projects decisions must be made based on multiple, even conflicting objectives. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are widely used for such decisions. However, a common disadvantage among many such methods available in the literature is that they require input from a real decision maker. This paper presents the development and application of an expert system based on fuzzy set theory and IF-THEN rules. The system mimics a real decision maker. Along with two conventional MCDM methods the developed expert system was applied on a data set from the Columbia River Basin salmon recovery plan to assess its potential usefulness as a decision-making tool for natural resource projects. The results suggest that the fuzzy expert system is easy to develop and makes better decisions than the other two conventional MCDM methods used.

Cowling, Keith, David Metcalf, and A. J. Rayner, Resource Structure of Agriculture: An Economic Analysis, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1970, xiii + 248 pp. (

Resource structure of agriculture: an economic analysis , Resource structure of agriculture: an economic analysis , مرکز فناوری اطلاعات و اطلاع رسانی کشاورزی

7.40)

The paper by Colby is well written, thoughtful, and provocative. She reviews the record of water exchanges in the West, focusing on the policyinduced transactions costs (PITC) necessary to obtain state approval of proposed water rights exchanges. These costs result from considering externalities that otherwise would be ignored by water buyers and sellers negotiating in their own best interests. But I have a concern that we rec-