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Show The concept of " public ownership" of water contained in the constitutions of appropriation states may be viewed in at least two different ways. Since private rights to water use under an appropriation system are merely usufructory, i. e., the right to use, not to own outright; the state may be viewed under existing arrangments as providing various individual users with free rights to the use of water that belongs to the public in general. In accordance with this view, the state as the legal guardian and administrator of these rights might logically impose rent or fees on the use of these public resources. On the other hand, under a somewhat different view of the " public ownership" concept, the state may be viewed as not " owning" the water in the sense that it owns land, buildings, and so forth, but that it merely regulates the water resources for the benefit of the public. In this view, it would only be appropriate for the state to charge regulatory fees as discussed earlier. Constitutional questions related to the imposition of state water user fees would, in the final analysis, have to be answered by state supreme courts in each of the states where the fees would be imposed. ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS An important advantage of user fees is their potential to subject government programs and operations to the discipline of a market test, thus replacing in part, if not entirely, a political evaluation process governing resource allocation and utilization. If government programs are subjected to the allocation function of the price system, which is commonplace for most goods and services, overinvestment in many activities can be averted or mitigated and resources can be saved for other uses. Although there may be major advantages from the employment of fees, there are a number of forces which act to prevent their use or to reduce their effectiveness. The shifting of financing burdens from the general taxpayer to the user will not be easy to accomplish. Although some taxpayers may be convinced that they are subsidizing water users through general taxes, the water user in most cases will contend his water prices are already too high. Then, too, many people simply like to get free goods and services. Indeed the appeal of getting something for nothing is almost universal. Thus it is highly unlikely that any user accustomed to receiving free goods will welcome the imposition of user fees. According to Stockfish ( 1967) there are also strong internal forces within government organizations that operate against the rational use of fees. Most administrators prefer to avoid the discipline of external checks or constraints. Bureaus and agencies ordinarily are advocates of their own activities, and with no profit criterion to measure system performance, crude physical output measures become the criteria of system effectiveness. More output is better than less. Charging prices for output curtails demand and hence the size and prestige of the agency. Thus, government agencies are not likely to be sympathetic towards fees unless these fees constitute a source of funds that may facilitate financing an even larger operation. The imposition of user fees probably would be more acceptable to water users if the revenue produced therefrom were earmarked for water development or water management purposes only. In addition to financing project construction and cost sharing, these earmarked revenues might be employed to fund the operating costs of the state engineer's office and other water administrative agencies in the state. The trade off of course would be less general tax revenue funding required for these operations. There would be a loss in fiscal control by the legislature in an " earmarking" arrangement. Agencies with access to such committed funds enjoy a great deal of independence from the normal budgeting and appropriation process. A possible middle ground between the alternative of completely circumventing the legislature by funneling user fee revenues directly to water agencies, and the other extreme of merely putting the revenues into the general funds of the state, would be to dedicate the revenues to a central water development fund. This fund, though restricted to appropriate water development and management purposes, could be administered by the legislature or a state board. An example of this type of an arrangement is the highway trust fund used by the federal government. In establishing a user- fee system in a state, questions concerning measuring, recording, and reporting water uses would have to be carefully considered. If user fees were imposed upon water rights in some form, i. e., as a regulatory fee, property tax, or some other charge, the condition of water rights records would be of interest. In Utah where progress has been made in defining and recording rights through the adjudication process, the records are far from complete. In addition to records of adjudication, other records defining rights consist of diligence claims, court decrees, and rights applications. Thousands of rights based upon use prior to the establishment of the administrative water rights system in the state remain unrecorded in any form. It is estimated that perhaps 10 percent are unrecorded. Complete adjudication of rights in Utah is years away given the current level of funding for this activity. Some other appropriation states are not as far along as Utah. Dewsnup et al. ( 1971), after analyzing several measures, suggested an " Illustrative State Statute to Require Recording and Quantification of Water Rights." This suggested legislation would require all unrecorded or unfiled water rights to be filed for and recorded by a certain date. Those rights not recorded within the specified time period would lose their 47 |