新澳门六合彩内幕信息

Karrigan鈥 B枚rk鈥檚 Award-Winning Water Rights Solution

Law Professor Wins Morrison Prize for Most Impactful Sustainability-Related Legal Paper in North America

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Aerial of Colorado River running through sandtone canyon
The Colorado River supplies water to seven U.S. states for more than 35 million people and irrigates more than 5 million acres of crops. (Getty)

, 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis professor of law and Associate Director at the Center for Watershed Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious $10,000 for his paper on water rights. The Sandra Day O鈥機onnor College of Law at Arizona State University recognizes B枚rk鈥檚 paper as 鈥渢he most impactful sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North America鈥 for 2023. 

B枚rk鈥檚 winning paper, 鈥溾 published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, proposes a solution to address current and future water crises in the US: an exactions framework. 

鈥淲hen you turn on your tap and you get water, you pay for the delivery of that water, for the infrastructure, and for the business to run. But there's no cost associated with the actual water itself,鈥 said B枚rk. 鈥淲e don't pay for the damage that water use does to public resources.鈥

 It's not fair for the public to have to pay the real cost of water use, and water users would make more efficient water use-decisions if they had to consider the real cost of water. 鈥擪arrigan B枚rk

Headshot of Karrigan Bork
Karrigan B枚rk

An exactions framework imposes more of the 鈥渞eal鈥 costs of water on those who withdraw and use water. These costs can include damage done to downstream ecosystems, riparian habitat, beaches fed by river sediment, other instream water uses, and to all those that rely on these services. The exactions framework would use these new water payments to provide dedicated money toward restoring and protecting ecosystems. 

Exact cost

鈥淭he idea of the exactions is that you tie all the public costs of water use directly to the decision to use water,鈥 said B枚rk. 鈥淔or example, if you鈥檙e withdrawing water and it鈥檚 going to have negative impacts on native Colorado River fishes, you would pay a cost per acre-foot that is going to go towards mitigation of those impacts.鈥 

Currently, there are no required exactions for damaged ecosystem services. Because people aren鈥檛 paying for these public costs, people don鈥檛 realize the real cost of their water use, and so they use too much. 

鈥淎 goal is also just to help people make smarter decisions about how much water they use and how they get that water, without having to resort to regulation,鈥 said B枚rk. 鈥淭his approach uses the economic signals based on the true costs of water to help people make better decisions on their own.鈥

鈥淎 goal is also just to help people make smarter decisions about how much water they use and how they get that water, without having to resort to regulation.鈥

Most costs would be associated with big water uses, such as agriculture. For household charges, B枚rk said the cost would be very little, and could be adjusted based on income. 

鈥淭here鈥檚 definitely going to be costs associated with paying for water," said B枚rk. "But that鈥檚 the point: Internalizing these costs will reduce water use.鈥

The framework would also recognize and reward farmers who use their land to help species, like flooding their farms for migratory birds. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 a tool that might put our ecosystems in a better place,鈥 said B枚rk. 鈥淚t鈥檒l help give them better odds of surviving current and future climate change.鈥

Troy Rule, faculty director of the Sandra Day O鈥機onnor College of Law at Arizona State University, said the exactions framework B枚rk鈥檚 paper presents is a creative and intriguing idea.

鈥淚n an age of unprecedented pressure on watershed鈥攅specially in the Western United States 鈥 policies built upon B枚rk鈥檚 vision could be instrumental in addressing chronic and growing conflicts over rivers and other freshwate


Malia Reiss is a science news intern with 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis Strategic Communications. She studies environmental science and management at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis.

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Kat Kerlin, 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis News and Media Relations, 530-750-9195, kekerlin@ucdavis.edu 

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