Consider Steven Cryos’ words, “When disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed.” Witnessing domestic water insecurity in events such as Hurricane Katrina, the instability in Flint, Michigan, and most recently the winter storms affecting millions across Texas, we decided to take action. The period between a water supply’s disruption and restoration is filled with anxiety, uncertainty, and distress -- particularly since there is no clear indication of when, exactly, restoration comes. It is for this reason that Water Works now exists. As a team of students from diverse backgrounds, what started as an honors project with the Founders Lab at Arizona State University became the seed that will continue to mature into an economically sustainable business model supporting the optimistic visions and tenants of humanitarianism. By having conversations with community members, conducting market research, competing for funding and fostering progress amid the COVID-19 pandemic, our team’s problem-solving traverses the disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to educate our readers about a unique solution to emerging issues of water insecurity that are nested across and within systems who could benefit from the introduction of a personal water reclamation system, showcase our team’s entrepreneurial journey, and propose future directions that will this once pedagogical exercise to continue fulfilling its mission: To heal, to hydrate, and to help bring safe water to everyone.

Water markets are a promising method for adapting to water scarcity in the western United States, and the Colorado-Big Thompson Project (CBT) market is often held up as a prime example of their potential. While much has been written about the CBT market, the current academic literature tends to eschew structural modeling of supply and demand in favor of fitting hedonic price equations, which ignore many of the market’s unique characteristics. This paper proposes a model of supply and demand for CBT water which accounts for these unique features, including transaction supply, municipality stockpiling, and differences in behavior across different types of water users. The estimation of this model is made possible by novel administrative records data on both transfers and ownership of CBT water, the processing and features of which are described in detail. While the voluminous and messy nature of the data has prevented complete estimation of the model at this point, some preliminary results are presented along with a plan for future work.