Emerging agricultural water conservation price incentives

Recent Bureau of Reclamation policies encourage or require irrigation distr icts to adopt price conservation incentives. Using unpublished survey resul ts and new district-level information; we examine the rate structures and i ncentives of district water pricing. Our findings reveal that the majority: of districts use fixed charges independent of the quantity of water delive red and that most conservation rate structures recently implemented are des igned so that the rst tier quantity allocation satisfies most crop water ne eds. Although other district management objectives may be satisfied, price incentives are diminished or nonexistent. The question of whether conservat ion is being achieved is, tautological and depends on how each district def ines conservation.