How I rented a piece of a river in a never-ending western drought

'Anyone can buy a water right,' I learned, as long as the owner has a use for the 'wet asset'. Part of the Snake river became mine after negotiations with a tribe in Idaho - but I finally realized it could never really belong to me

About a year ago, after another too-dry California winter, I decided to purchase an extremely large amount of water, acres of it, all for me. I don't run a farm, nor do I have a big pond in my backyard. In fact, I don't have a backyard. I don't own any land at all. Still, I could, in theory, purchase water in bulk on the water market.

In the American west, the way water ownership works is different from how it works east of the Mississippi, where water is abundant. In the east, the easiest path to owning a whole lot of water is to own some land, which will almost certainly have water on or underneath it. Out west, things are a little more confusing.