ABSTRACT
The broader institutions of society obviously have a direct impact on any program to undertake water conservation measures. They create the basic set of incentives and values that permeate the behavior of individuals and groups that have a stake in water policies. Water policy in the West has been fashioned through a process that has been called "distributive" politics, in which the general taxpayer has been required to pay the costs of irrigation development, except insofar as the farmers were able to pay. The systematic tendency of federal and state water supply agencies has been to make decisions that defy economic rationality. Another variable in the broader political arena is the quality and availability of information provided by federal and state agencies concerning water conservation. There are numerous exogenous variables that may have significant effects on the sense of urgency for water conservation. Three solutions that are generally offered for water supply problems are interbasin transfers, weather modification, and desalination.
