Water rights
A legal entitlement to draw a quantity of water. Traded in the American West and increasingly elsewhere.
The invention
The problem. Mining and irrigation in an arid region required a rule for who gets water when there is not enough.
Prior appropriation — first in time, first in right — replaced the riparian doctrine that worked in wet England and failed in dry Colorado. It created a transferable property right in a flowing resource, one of the stranger inventions in property law and increasingly one of the most consequential.
Construction of the Clinton-Wachusett sewage system and water supply, Mass.
1896 · Library of Congress · Public domain
Where it has failed
Not a list of disasters. A pattern library.
- 1913Owens Valley, California
The aqueduct
Los Angeles acquired Owens Valley water rights through agents concealing their purpose, draining the valley's agriculture.
Water rights are acquired quietly because the price changes the moment intent is known.
- 2012–2016California
Drought pricing
Water trading prices rose more than tenfold during severe drought, revealing the value of senior rights.
Scarcity pricing in a necessity is politically unstable regardless of how sound the market design is.
Where it stands today
You now have the shape. Here is the reading.
Live from public data, pulled at request time. Read it with the failures above in mind — not because a repeat is due, but because knowing the mechanism is what lets you recognise one early.
Heating degree days
NOAA / National Weather Service
No data returned
National Weather Service returned no usable observations
NOAA / National Weather Service
In your ledger
Reaches most households as a utility bill rather than an investment, but it is the clearest case of climate turning into a price.
See it in the demoKeep reading