To mitigate a drinking water crisis in Kathmandu valley, the Government of Nepalinitiated the Melamchi Water Supply Project in 1997, which will divert water fromthe Melamchi River to Kathmandu city’s water supply network. In the first phase,the Project will divert 170,000 cubic meters of water per day (at the rate of1.97M3/sec), which will be tripled using the same infrastructure as city waterdemand increases in the future. The large scale transfer of water would have far-reachingimplications in both water supplying and receiving basins.

Water rights demand and supply in the upper Maipo river basin (Metropolitan Region of Chile) are estimated for the period July 1998 to June 2003, as well as a reduced form model for the equilibrium water rights price based on supply and demand determinants, as well as characteristics of the participating agents such as the economic sector of each agent and their individual market experience. Results show that the main participants in the market are both agriculture and real estate sectors (developers); agriculture buying 57� % and selling 68� % of transactions.

For over 10 years, several species of salmon have been identified as either threatened or endangered in the Snake River Basin of Idaho. The United States Bureau of Reclamation, in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, has proposed a variety of plans to increase stream flows in the Snake River Basin to facilitate movement by juvenile salmon smolts to the ocean.