What water actually rents and sells for across the American West, from the posted bank floor to per-barrel oilfield pricing. Every figure below comes from a public agency, a published index, or a reported transaction, and links to its source. WaterLeases publishes no unsourced numbers.
The spread, on one chart
Price per acre foot · log scale
Rents, per yearSales and spot
$10$100$1,000$10k$100k
What water rents for · per AF per year
Idaho Water Supply Bank
$33
Edwards VISPO (standby to suspension)
$54 to $214
Edwards permit leases (SAWS)
$100 to $140
Colorado Front Range leases
$200
Reclamation conservation (1 to 3 yr)
$330 to $400
SDCWA wholesale to Western MWD
$1.3k
What water sells for · spot and outright
California spot (NQH2O)
$536
Rio Grande municipal (sale)
$3.4k
Permian frac water ($1 to $2/bbl)
$7.8k to $15.5k
CBT units (sale, per unit)
$52k to $85k
$10$100$1,000$10k$100k
Logarithmic scale: each gridline is ten times the last, and bars start at $10 so length reads as price. The solid segment is the sourced range. Every figure is sourced in the rates table. New Mexico fallowing payments ($750 to $800 per acre) are excluded because they price land, not acre feet.
Market
State
Type
Rate
As of
Source
Colorado Front Range irrigation and municipal leases
The Idaho Water Resource Board set the rental rate at $33 per acre foot beginning in 2025; the water right owner keeps 90 percent and the Bank retains 10 percent.(Idaho Department of Water Resources, 2025 board rate)
The NQH2O index, which tracks lease and sale transactions across the five most active California regions, stood at $535.91 per acre foot on its August 26, 2026 trade date. The index is published weekly on Wednesdays and is volatile: it has roughly doubled since mid 2026 as California snowpack collapsed.(Nasdaq / Veles Water, Aug 26, 2026)
A December 2025 public notice through the TCEQ Rio Grande Watermaster offered municipal use water rights at $3,400 per acre foot. Texas Water Code 49.504(b)(2)(A) requires these offers to be posted for 90 days, so the original notice has since rotated off the TCEQ site; the figure is recorded here as a dated benchmark, not a live offer.(TCEQ Rio Grande Watermaster (90-day posting), Dec 2025 (posting expired))
New Mexico pays landowners $750 to $800 per acre, depending on how long the ground stays idle, to fallow previously irrigated land in the Lower Rio Grande; the state issued nearly 160 contracts covering roughly 8,000 acres in 2026. Note this is priced per acre of land, not per acre foot of water.(Source New Mexico, 2026)
The San Diego County Water Authority signed a 21-year agreement to supply Western Municipal Water District 10,000 acre feet a year for $13 million annually, about $1,300 per acre foot of reliable treated supply. A comparable deal with Eastern Municipal Water District followed, and Burbank contracted for up to 5,000 acre feet a year through 2047 in August 2026.(Times of San Diego, Apr 2026)
Reclamation pays Lower Colorado River water users to conserve on a posted schedule: $330 per acre foot for a one-year commitment, $365 for two years, and $400 for three years. The published agreement table covers 23 participants, 1,563,194 acre feet, and $663,611,984 in total commitments, with Imperial Irrigation District at $777 per acre foot the highest rate on the list. Funded under the Inflation Reduction Act.(Bureau of Reclamation (System Conservation Implementation Agreements), 2023 to 2026 agreements)
The Edwards Aquifer Authority pays enrolled irrigators $54 per acre foot per year to stand by, plus $160 per acre foot in years when irrigation is actually suspended, for a total of $214 per acre foot. Suspension triggers when the J-17 index well sits at or below 635 feet on October 1.(Edwards Aquifer Authority (VISPO), 2026 program year)
San Antonio Water System reported paying $100 to $140 per acre foot per year to lease Edwards Aquifer rights, with historical drought spikes to $185. The Edwards Aquifer Authority does not require price reporting, and only about 9 percent of recorded sale transactions disclose a price, so these figures are proxies rather than an index.(Water Markets for Texas, Texas 2036, 2022 data, published 2025)
Freshwater sold to operators for hydraulic fracturing has reached $1 per barrel and in some cases exceeded $2 per barrel. One acre foot is roughly 7,758 barrels.(American Oil & Gas Reporter / B3 Insight, 2025)
Quoting these figures? Cite the primary source above, and WaterLeases appreciates a link. This table is maintained by WaterLeases editors and updated as the public data moves.
Unit conversions every deal uses
Unit
Equals
Why it matters
1 acre foot
325,851 gallons
The volume covering one acre, one foot deep.
1 acre foot
43,560 cubic feet
Same volume in cubic feet.
1 acre foot
≈ 7,758 barrels
At the oilfield standard of 42 gallons per barrel.
1 cfs for 24 hours
≈ 1.98 acre feet
One cubic foot per second flowing for a full day.
1 million gallons
≈ 3.07 acre feet
Useful for municipal and industrial contracts quoted in MG.
The spread between rows is not noise; it is buyer type. Posted bank rates are convenience floors. Agricultural rentals price against farm margins. Municipal and sale prices capitalize decades of reliability. Oilfield pricing reflects logistics: operators pay against the cost of trucking water in, which is why the per-barrel rows tower over everything else.
Your water sits somewhere specific in this spread, set by its seniority, its basin, and which of these buyers can physically and legally reach it. That placement is exactly what a valuation establishes, before a counterparty establishes it for you.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to lease water in 2026?
Sourced anchors: the Idaho Water Supply Bank posts $33 per acre foot per year for irrigation rentals (2025 rate), Colorado Front Range irrigation and municipal leases pay about $200 per acre foot per year, and California spot water was $535.91 per acre foot on the NQH2O index on August 26, 2026. Premium demand, municipal options and oilfield supply, clears well above these.
How much is an acre foot of water worth to buy outright?
Two sourced 2025-2026 markers: Rio Grande municipal rights in Texas were publicly offered at $3,400 per acre foot, and Colorado-Big Thompson units traded between $52,000 and $85,000 per unit in early 2026, off a 2022 peak of $101,000.
What do oil companies pay for water?
Reported Permian Basin fresh water prices reached $1 per barrel and in some cases exceeded $2 per barrel. At roughly 7,758 barrels per acre foot, that is about $7,800 to $15,500 per acre foot, the top of the western water market.
Where do these numbers come from?
Every row links its source: state agencies (Idaho Department of Water Resources, TCEQ), the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, and reported transactions covered by named publications. We do not publish unsourced figures. Methodology is documented on our data page.
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