"I have no interest in debating important issues like the law of the river with people who exist in an ivory tower, who are free to spin out any theory they wish, and who are not responsible for making things work in the real world. I would observe that the subsidy issue is entirely specious. It is a complete and total red herring."

Whatever subsidy is discussed, it does not affect the Colorado River Compact. "This is the use of another argument of people who don't like agriculture," he said.

"It's not even worth debating. It's this unrelated attack on the law of the river. . . . This nation has in the past and will in the future subsidize many things.

"If it were not for the existence of subsidies we would not have public universities and we would not have professors who can sit and spin theories unrelated to reality." Roads are subsidized, he added.

Government reallocates wealth and regulates, according to Raley. "We have a zillion pages of the tax code." It takes money from one place and uses it to subsidize something else.

"I'd say universities have been subsidized for several hundred years and I fully support it."

Sale of water rights

McCool: "If we eliminate farmer subsidies, we need to give them alternatives, and the alternative is to sell or lease their water to willing customers at market prices."

A central Utah farmer could pour his water in egregious amounts into hay fields, raising hay to sell to California. "But if you were to sell California that same water," making a profit, people would scream.

A prevailing attitude in Utah concerning water is "don't let California get it," he said.

"It's a mind-set that we should grow hay rather than marketing (water). They're still stuck back in the yeoman farmer concept of the West."

If the law of the river were rewritten through an open, democratic process, water distribution would be fairer, he said. Water allocation would more closely match the needs of the West of today, he said.

What would Utah look like then? "I think there'd be fewer farms. We overproduce agriculture here. Some farmers could not make a profit without receiving heavy government subsidies."

Farmers are the hardest-working people in society, McCool added. "They work all the time, they get massive subsidies, and they're still going broke. They still can't make a decent living. What's wrong with this picture?"

If the law is changed as he would like, some farmers producing crops for which no suitable market exists would go under, just as with others who produce different products. "Other farmers would choose to market their water, perhaps locally, perhaps nationally. And they'd make a lot of money. And I think that's great."

On the urban level, water prices would rise to reflect true market prices and there would be a dramatic reduction in water use. "People would no longer have incentives to use water foolishly. That's really the bottom line."

Raley: Sale of water rights is not something the Bush administration "has any interest in pursuing. First, because it's fundamentally inconsistent with the law of the river. Second, it's one of those novel theories that professors and law students just talk about."

"There is very little possibility that approach will be relevant to the real world for decades, for the simple reason that attempts to implement such a thing would trigger most certainly decades of disruptive court litigation."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com