This blog post is about CHANGE. CHANGE is tough. A water right CHANGE is really tough. Not only does a water right CHANGE impact social norms, but it also impacts the basis of life–water. A CHANGE process that receives scrutiny from the state’s administrative agency, and also the public potentially adversely affected.

Even so, our ability to change water rights among users and uses is a basic premise of water marketing. And for markets to efficiently allocating resources, CHANGE is essential.

For this reason, I wanted to highlight a recent article on Montana water rights changes by the Trout Unlimited, Montana Water Project: Changing Changes; A Road Map for Montana’s Water Management. This article was first published in the University of Denver Law Review and can be purchased here. I recommend doing so.

I’ll be the first to admit reading law review articles is not what gets me up in the morning, but this article is the exception.

This paper states it best: ”The hallmark of twenty-first century water management is the transfer of water from one use to another.”