Other Water Trusts

Other Environmental Water Trusts

The US Water Trusts

The first established water trusts grew in the Pacific Northwest of the US, which is a particularly dry area where water is scarce and unpredictable. A raft of new legislation in the Pacific Northwest states in the 1970’s and 1980’s (1971 Water Resources Act (Washington), and the 1987 Instream Water Rights Act (Oregon)) permitted water rights to be purchased and converted to environmental flows, thereby allowing market forces to drive environmental flow transfers. 

This legislative change triggered the creation of a number of private water trusts.  The private water trusts were based on the land trust model, which is used widely in the US to purchase and protect land of high conservation value.

There are four major water trusts in the US:
Oregon
Washington
Montana  
Colorado 

Some traditional US land based environmental NGO’s have also incorporated smaller water trust structures within them, such as:

  • the Trust for Public Land
  • the Environmental Defense Fund,
  • the Nature Conservancy,
  • Montana Trout Unlimited,
  • Ducks Unlimited, and
  • the Resource Renewal Institute’s Water Heritage Trust. 

For a very useful review of US water trusts, see “Getting our feet wet: An introduction to water trusts” Mary Ann King, (2004) Vol 28, Harvard Environmental Law Review, p 496 at Annexure X.

The Australian Water Trusts
In Australia the land trusts have become a major force in conservation over the last 15 years, notably Bush Heritage and Australian Wildlife Conservancy, with the more recent entry of the large US trusts, Nature Conservancy and Pew Foundation. Replicating this success in the field of water conservation is the hope of the more recent small water trusts that have begun to appear, often at a regional level or on a restricted basis.

It is these groups which the Environmental Water Trust has joined to establish the Water Trust Alliance  to promote the role of this method of water related conservation. These groups are seen as complementary and not competitors for charitable donations.