With water right basin closures and moratoriums occurring across the West, there is an increasing demand for existing irrigation water rights. In the last year, I've found myself, more frequently, using the term "MARKETABLE WATER." As I defined previously, marketable water is water that can be transfered to another use or appropriated to additional acreage. An increasingly popular stance from state water agencies is that an irrigation water right's transferable water represents the water associated with its consumptive use. For example, if alfalfa has a consumptive of 1 acre-foot per acre and a water right historically irrigated 100 acres of alfalfa, the water right's consumptive use is approximately 100 acre-feet per year.
This value represents the water that is consumptively used through evaporation and transpiration. This value represents water not available to other water users. This value represents the water can be bought, sold, traded to other water users with the least amount of adverse impact. This value represents the MARKETABLE WATER.
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