Drought Water Rationing and Transferable Rations
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 121, Issue 6
Abstract
Water rationing is a common, but little studied, technique for managing urban water supplies during drought. This paper reviews a wide range of approaches for implementing water rationing for urban drought management. These rationing approaches are assessed in terms of practical and theoretical performance. The paper then examines the potential benefits of allowing drought water rations to be transferable or marketable. Transferable rights have become a common suggestion for allocating scarce resources for a wide range of water-quantity and water-quality problems. Although attractive in terms of economic theories of resource allocation, transferable drought water rations often will be uneconomical for small transactions, due to likely high costs of completing transactions. However, transferable drought water rations might be useful for allocating scarce water among large industrial, commercial, and institutional users and among residential users with very different water demands. The equity effects of transferable drought rations would vary with the initial allocation of water rations. Legal aspects of how transferable rations might be implemented for public water-supply systems remain to be explored.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 121 • Issue 6 • November 1995
Pages: 429 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 1, 1995
Published in print: Nov 1995
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