Like many other towns and cities in the West, Prescott Valley uses some of its treated wastewater for non-potable purposes: irrigating a golf course, filling a couple of small lakes. But the municipality is exploring a brave new frontier in Western water sales by preparing to hold an auction, scheduled for late October, at which it will sell rights to its future supply of treated effluent - which the state estimates will be 2,724 acre-feet a year. The town could continue to sell small quantities of effluent credits to single buyers, but, like a farmer who sees more current value in his land as a chunk of real estate than as producing fields, it’s looking to cash out in hopes of a single big payoff. It will continue to produce and treat wastewater, but how the credits that water represents are sold will be up to private developers or investors.

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