Feasibility Study of Establishing a Water Rights Banking/Brokering Service in Utah

Changes in water use patterns are an inevitable consequence of relentless social transformations taking place. Especially where waters have been fully appropriated, the needs of a dynamic society must be met through transfers in water ownership. Yet, there are a variety of factors that may operate as impediments to the shifting of water according to social preferences as expressed through water markets. As a mechanism for facilitating water transfers, exchagnes, or rentals, the concept of water banking and water brokering may be fruitful. This repot appraises the potential for initiating and operating such a service within the legal, institutional, and organizational framework prevailing in Utah. Questions addressed are: What are the special characteristics of water rights and water right owners that constitute important elements of the market arena? How would a banking and/or brokering service effectively deal with the mix of marketable water right equities ranging from the general corporate right (exercised in satisfying an unlimited variety of individual uses at the pleasure of the corporation, i.e. municipality, conservancy district, etc.); the individual proportion of share of a mutally owned right; to the individually owned water right? However would the water banking operation be coordinated with the State Engineer who must approve all changes in use? What are the organizational alternatives for establishing a water bank? Should such a service be sponsored and operated as a public or private activity? What are the legal considerations that must be addressed? Are there constitutional, statutory, or procedural consideratiosn taht seriously constrain the operation of a water banking/brokering service? Can such a service be made to complement present institutional structures and whatever forms of banking and brokering they may currently provide? What are the economic considerations in the creation of a water banking/brokering service? It is concluded that a water bank could be effective in facilitating cost-effective and resource efficeint matchups of buyers and sellers of water. There are no constitutional, statutory, or regulative elemetns in Utah water administration that would seriously hinder the operation of a water banking/brokering system. However, there are some institutional peculiarities and debt encumbrances that may limit the market potential of particular water right equities. The protection of third party interests to any water rights transaction is a central consideration in arranging water transfers, exchanges, or rentals. Therefore, the water bank must be staffed by individuals having technical understanding of the hydrologic and legal impacts and the economic externalities that accompany particular water use changes. An appraisal of existing Utah organizations capable of assuming a water banking/brokering service suggest the Office of the State Engineer (public) and the Utah Water Users Association (private) as the two most liekly candidates. It is recommended that the evaluation of these two organizations now be made in more detail with respect to suitability of the new banking/brokering service to basin mission, current operating policies and programs, organizational structure, and fiscal and budgetary framework. Decision to initiate the concept should probably begin with a limited level of service, adding more comprehensive and more professional elements as justified by oeprating experience

A Preliminary Study on Expanding and Financing State Water Development

The effects of recent energy price increases, domestic inflation rates, financial market fluctuations, and changing public attitudes toward federally sponsored water resource development and management have brought economic and financial consideratiosn to the forefront of Western water management issues. Recently enacted federal policies place increased responsibility on the states and localities for the development and management of their water resources. A response common to many of the western states has been to stengthen traditional, and often small, water financing and development programs. In creating and sustaining such a posture, however, state governments must address the important questions pertaining to the economic and financial impact of greater state involvement, the distributional impacts of state taxing and lending programs, and the state social goals relating to such managerial involvement. The traditional and recently expanded water development programs of the State of Utah have been reviewed in the light of such management issues. The demand for state financing of water projects was addressed through an examination of economic indicators and an inventory of potential projects. State options for obtaining capital financing also were examined. This review indicates taht increased financing activity and the potential for increased concentration of water development project benefits to specific social groups have created a need for greater clarity in the legislative mandate and greater accounting and visibility of water project impacts through the use of improved economic and social evalution procedures. Moreover, in the absence of such safeguards, the continued investment of state funds might be considered premature and not always in the best interest of the state\u27s residents

Organizational Alternatives to Achieve Greater Uniformity in State-wide Water Rights Management in Utah

In the distribution of water among users in the state of Utah there is lack of organizational uniformity. On some rivers, the state engineer is assisted by river sommissioners who have been appointed to measure and monitor water deliveries. On other rivers there are no comissioners; problems and disputes must be settled on a case by case basis by the state engineer. The responsibilities, arrangements, salaries, and methods of payment for commissioners vary from basin to basin. A more unifed distribution organization composed of state-employed water sommissioners would have several advantages over the existing system of commissioners employed by local water users. Advantages would include the development and retantion of a higher level of expertise, improved record keeping and reporting, more complete geographical coverage of river systems, and better balance of commissioner work loads. These advantages would come at a higher cost, but the impact on water users could be mitigated by dividing the cost of the system between the users and the general public in a dual financing arrangement

Adapting Water Services to Urban Growth: A Case Study of Salt Lake County

Urbanizing areas thorughout the nation are considering governmental reorganization or consolidation to coordinate planning and improve the cost effectiveness of the delivery of public services. More efficient water supply and wastewater services may become important in the political debate over reorganization. However water factors figure politically, accomplished reorganizations must carefully plan for efficent provision of water services. This study profiles the structure and interactions of municipalities and water service agencies in Utah\u27s Salt Lake County during the 1970s. Both 1975 and 1978 attempts to consolidate Salt Lake City and the unincorporated areas of the county failed. The voting patterns, interest ground positions, and issues are examined. One major water issue surfaced in a concern that service jurisdictions and financial obligations were not sufficiently defined to protect the communities previously bound through water service agreements but excluded from the consolidated government. Additionally, the proposed dissolution of the County Water Conservancy District raised doubts on the division of equity in water rights and distribution facilities. Any large water development stabilizes institutional arrangements to a degree which may become a financial and legal contrainst to desired change. Overall, nonwater issues dominated the decision in this water sensitive area. This implies that water service jurisdictional alignments are set by political decisions based on nonwater considerations. Water utilities must do their best to be effective in the resulting context

Integrating Water Resources and Land Use Planning

Information and recommendations were developed pertaining to the integrating of water resource and land use planning at a conceptual level. In the accomplishment of this goal, the report acts as a vehicle of information transfer to facilitate recognition of the interrelationships between land use and winter resources planning by practitioners in both areas. The approach that was used includes six basic components: 1) the clarification of current planning theory as it pertains to both water and land use planning, 2) analysis and review of historical and current land use planning practices, 3) review of historical and current land use planning practices, 4) identification of problems and concepts which would affect the integration of land and water planning, 5) the design of a conceptual framework (the IRUM model) which would facilitate the integration of land and water planning, and 6) a case study of a selected planning region for small scale applications of the IRUM model. In connection with the case study, a general population survey was taken to identify social and environmental values, land and water use preferences, and other conditions which would affect an integrated planning effort. The recommendations developed in the report cover institutional issues such as culture, law, and organizational arrangements, and also methodological issues such as conceptual framework development and procedural problems which will confront actual efforts to integrate land and water resource planning

Levels of Analysis in Comprehensive River Basin Planning

Since nearly every water resource managment choice has two or more sides, differences must be resolved in decision making. Equitable resolution requires an understanding of the reasons for the differences. These reasons originate in the implemented plans have physical-environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political impacts at levels ranging from local to national or international in scope. Decisions are made by individuals and groups impacted in all of these dimensions and at all of these levels; the decisions generate additional impacts; and the entire interactive process changes water management practice in ways outside the control of any one decision point or even dicision dimension. The objective of this study is to conceptualize this process in a way that will help in establishing institutional mechanisms for reconciling differences among levels of analysis. The conceptualization used viewed differences in choices being made at the various levels of analysis as associated with perspective differences having value, jurisdiction, action, and temporal elements. The possible combinations of differences within and between these elements were used to identify ten categories of institutional obstacles to efficient water planning (differences in values, conflicts between value and jurisdiction, etc.). The history of water resources planning on the Colorado River basin was then examined to identify 17 specific institutional obstacles, and a computerized policy simulation was applied to levels of analysis in the Uintah basin of Utah to identify three more. These 20 obstacles were shown to be broadly distributed over the ten categories, and the nature of the obstacles defined provides valuable insight into the common characteristics of the major institutional obstacles to water management. The priciples of logic as applicable to rationality in decision making were then used to identify two root causes of levels\u27 conflicts. If alternatives are evaluated from a single perspective, the ostensible causal relationships commonly used lead to estimates of the sum of the consequences from the parts of a water management program being far more than the total consequences of the entire program. Looked at another way, since available water resources planning tools do not properly allocate consequences from interactive processes to individual causal sources, decisions made to acheive a desired impact are not based on reliable information. In fact, different decisions made over time from a single perspective have conflicting impacts. When multiple perspectices are considered, one finds that individual values do not aggregate linearly in forming social values, many actions are not efficient in achieving preferred values, and decision makers are not able to implement their plans as desired. Real world situations combine interacting perspectives and partial contributions. Nine recommendations are made on what to do next in improving water resources planning in an interactive, nonlinear world

Normal values of regional left ventricular endocardial motion: multicenter color kinesis study. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H2464– H2476

. Normal values of regional left ventricular endocardial motion: multicenter color kinesis study. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 279: H2464-H2476, 2000.-Our goal was to establish normal values for quantitative color kinesis indexes of left ventricular (LV) wall motion over a wide range of ages, which are required for objective diagnosis of regional systolic and diastolic dysfunction. Color-encoded images were obtained in 194 normal subjects (95 males, 99 females, age 2 mo to 79 yr) in four standard views. Quantitative indexes of magnitude and timing of systolic and diastolic function were studied for age-and genderrelated differences. Normal limits of all ejection and filling indexes were in a narrow range (Յ25% of the mean), with no major gender-related differences. Despite invariable ejection fractions, both peak filling and ejection rates decreased with age (30 and 20%, correspondingly) with a concomitant increase in mean filling and ejection times, resulting in fiveand twofold increases in the late to early filling and ejection ratios, correspondingly. Diastolic asynchrony increased with age (from 4.7 Ϯ 2.0 to 6.4 Ϯ 3.2 from the 2nd to 7th decade). The normal values of color kinesis indexes should allow objective detection of regional LV systolic and diastolic dysfunction. echocardiography; ultrasound imaging; ventricular function; wall motion COLOR KINESIS IS AN EMERGING echocardiographic technique based on acoustic quantification, which uses color-encoding to depict left ventricular (LV) systolic and diastolic endocardial motion However, a new technique, which detects abnormalities by comparing individual patient's data with normal values, relies on having these normal values established in a large sample of the normal population. Accordingly, normal values of different indexes of magnitude and timing of global and regional LV function derived from color kinesis images need to be established to allow objective detection of abnormalities with a high level of confidence. We also hypothesized that these indexes may be age and gender dependent, in which case normal values would need to be established for different demographic groups. Accordingly, the purpose of this collaborative multicenter effort was to establish normal values for magnitude and timing indexes of wall motion by acquiring and analyzing systolic and diastolic color kinesis images in a large group of normal subjects of both sexes over a wide range of ages. METHODS Study population. The protocol for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Chicago (protocol #9171). This protocol was initially designed to include eight age groups (8 decades between 0 and 80 yr) with a minimum of 20 normal subjects each (50% males and 50% Address for reprint requests and othe

Hitomi (ASTRO-H) X-ray Astronomy Satellite

The Hitomi (ASTRO-H) mission is the sixth Japanese x-ray astronomy satellite developed by a large international collaboration, including Japan, USA, Canada, and Europe. The mission aimed to provide the highest energy resolution ever achieved at E  >  2  keV, using a microcalorimeter instrument, and to cover a wide energy range spanning four decades in energy from soft x-rays to gamma rays. After a successful launch on February 17, 2016, the spacecraft lost its function on March 26, 2016, but the commissioning phase for about a month provided valuable information on the onboard instruments and the spacecraft system, including astrophysical results obtained from first light observations. The paper describes the Hitomi (ASTRO-H) mission, its capabilities, the initial operation, and the instruments/spacecraft performances confirmed during the commissioning operations for about a month

Caratterizzazione di alcuni siti della rete accelerometrica nazionale al fine di individuare la risposta sismica locale

Le indagini geotecniche finalizzate alla stima della risposta sismica locale si limitano molto spesso ai primi 30 m di profondità, valore che è diventato uno standard per la classificazione delle caratteristiche di un sito. Negli anni ’90 Borcherdt (1994) e Martin e Dobry (1994) suggerirono 30 m come la profondità standard di indagine per la verifica delle strutture. Boore et al. (1993, 1994, 1997) e Boore e Joyner (1997) basarono le regressioni per il calcolo delle leggi predittive del moto del suolo sullo stesso parametro. Nel 1997 negli Stati Uniti il National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) nella stesura delle norme tecniche per le costruzioni in zona sismica (FEMA, 1997) utilizza per la prima volta il parametro Vs30 come indice per la classificazione dei suoli, con lo scopo di definirne l’amplificazione. Le norme tecniche per le costruzioni in zona sismica della comunità Europea, EC8 (ENV, 1998) ente da dati provenienti dagli Stati Uniti occidentali e, utilizzando dati provenienti dalla stessa regione, Wald & Mori (2000) segnalano che le VS,30 non sono molto ben correlate con l’entità dell’amplificazione, in quanto esiste una forte dispersione dei dati. La figura 1.1 mostra il rapporto tra le amplificazioni, mediate sull’intervallo di frequenza compreso tra 3-5 Hz. raccomandano lo stesso parametro per suddividere i terreni, anche se le classi differiscono in parte dalla classificazione NEHRP. Infine, anche in Italia, le Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni (Normative Tecniche per le Costruzioni, Gazzetta Ufficiale del 14/01/2008) adottano la stessa suddivisione dei terreni adottata dall’EC8.L’attendibilità della velocità delle onde di taglio nei primi 30 m (VS,30) come estimatore della risposta sismica di un sito, in termini di frequenza e amplificazione, è tuttavia molto discussa.Innanzitutto il parametro è stato ricavato unicamente da dati provenienti dagli Stati Uniti occidentali e, utilizzando dati provenienti dalla stessa regione, Wald & Mori (2000) segnalano che le Vs30 non sono molto ben correlate con l’entità dell’amplificazione, in quanto esiste una forte dispersione dei dati. La figura 1.1 mostra il rapporto tra le amplificazioni, mediate sull’intervallo di frequenza compreso tra 3-5 Hz. I valori risultano effettivamente molto dispersi, ma questo risultato può essere spiegato col fatto che non tutte le classi di sito hanno frequenza di risonanza compreso in questo intervallo di frequenza. Perciò per alcuni siti la media è stata calcolata nell’intorno della frequenza di risonanza (sulle amplificazioni massime), mentre per altri è stata calcolata sulle armoniche superiori, che hanno ampiezze minori. Lavori eseguiti con dati provenienti da altre regioni sottolineano come le Vs30 non siano buoni estimatori per la predizione di amplificazioni in bacini profondi (Park & Hashash, 2004), per la stima delle amplificazioni in altre regioni (Stewart et al., 2003) o in presenza di inversioni di velocità (Di Giacomo et al., 2005). Uno studio recente, eseguito su dati giapponesi (Zhao et al., 2006) si è evitato l’uso della Vs30 perché strati spessi di terreno rigido posti sopra il substrato roccioso amplificano il moto di lungo periodo, mentre gli strati sottili e soffici tendono ad amplificare il moto di corto periodo: ciò significa che la VS,30 non può rappresentare il periodo predominante del sito, dato che si basa solo sugli strati superficiali. Secondo Mucciarelli e Gallipoli (2006) il confronto tra l’amplificazione sismica al sito e la Vs30 mostra che quest’ultimo parametro non è adeguato per spiegare gli effetti di sito osservati in Italia a causa delle situazioni geologiche particolari che sono diffuse nel nostro paese. La figura 1.2 mostra la distribuzione dell’ampiezza rispetto alla classe di sito, in cui si vede che le classi sono mal discriminate e le mediane delle classi A e B (indicate dalla linea nera) sono uguali. È però necessario notare che questo grafico è stato costruito utilizzando le ampiezze ricavate col metodo dei rapporti spettrali H/V, ma in letteratura (Bard, 1999) è dimostrato che tali rapporti spettrali permettono di stimare la frequenza di risonanza, ma falliscono nella stima del valore di amplificazione. In particolare la Vs30 sottostima gli effetti locali ai siti con inversione di velocità e li sovrastima in siti con bacini profondi. La Vs30 sembra fornire dei buoni risultati solo in siti che abbiano un profilo di velocità monotono, crescente con la profondità e un forte contrasto di impedenza nella prima decina di metri. Questo studio si propone di verificare l’attendibilità della velocità delle onde di taglio valutate nei primi 30 m come estimatore della risposta sismica di un sito. Per questo scopo sono state selezionate 45 stazioni della Rete Accelerometrica Nazionale, di cui si conoscono i profili stratigrafici e i profili di velocità delle onde di taglio e di compressione. Inoltre sono state raccolte le registrazioni strong motion relative ai terremoti registrati da queste stazioni. Gli effetti di sito sono stati valutati in due modi: · Le registrazioni sono state utilizzate per calcolare i rapporti spettrali H/V per ricavare la frequenza fondamentale propria di ciascun sito (f0) e il relativo valore di amplificazione; · I profili di velocità delle onde di taglio sono serviti per ricavare il modello teorico monodimensionale per il calcolo della funzione di trasferimento del sito, eseguito per mezzo del modello proposto da Haskell e Thomson (Haskell, 1953, Thomson 1950), da cui ricavare la f0 e l’amplificazione. I valori ottenuti con i due metodi sono stati poi confrontati per verificare la congruenza dei risultati. I profili di velocità hanno permesso di classificare le stazioni utilizzando la velocità media delle onde di taglio nei primi 30 m (Vs30), secondo la normativa italiana. I risultati ottenuti dalla valutazione della risposta di ciascun sito, espressi in termini di frequenza fondamentale e amplificazione, sono stati correlati con la rispettiva classe di sito per verificare l’attendibilità del parametro delle Vs30 come estimatore degli effetti di sito