If Water Right Investment Sounds Too Good to Be True .... It Probably Is

If Water Right Investment Sounds Too Good to Be True .... It Probably Is

In a recent blog on watersage.com, Ponderosa Advisors Spencer Williams shared advice for those Colorado ag producers who may have heard a pitch about selling their water rights or about water right investments. He says that the old adage, "If it seems to good to be true, it probably is." is important to remember when considering any proposal.

Williams: "If you are approached at all, you have to trust the people you are dealing with. You have to be dealing in reality. You never want to make an investment with a resource that is critical to you that is based on what might happen even next year, five years, ten years from now. If it is something that is critical to your livelihood then the plan needs to work today. If it doesn't work today, then I would say that it is probably not the deal for you."

He continues with another important thing to remember when it comes to water right investments.

Williams: "Something else that people want to be aware of is that you can't just go and change your water right to a new use in water court and then create a lot of value. I see proposals now and again — some from groups of producers or others from investment- types — they have this idea that they can take their own water rights or someone else's water rights and go ahead and change them to a municipal use and immediately upon that change their water will be worth three or four or five times more and they will just go and sell it to the next city."

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