This study aimed to examine the feasibility, as well as identify the main factors for the same, in the proposition of a methodology for the implementation of charging for water use as a tool for water resources management in the basin of river Formoso located in the State of Tocantins. For this purpose, initially the agricultural users were characterized. They are responsible for over 97% of water consumption in the basin, which besides being the largest claimants of water, are responsible for the main productive activity in the region, the production of rice. In order to define the ability to pay, to determine the amount to be paid by users for cubic meter of water, it was applied the residual method, which estimates the user's ability to pay the difference between costs and total revenue generated by the rice production, where it reached the amount of R$ 0.0067/m³. Among the instruments present in the National Water Resources Policy (Law 9.433/97), together with the charge for water use is the basin plan, which determines the actions and programs to be carried out in the same, and the basin of river Formoso already has an ongoing plan with a worksheet that estimates all costs necessary for its operation. Searching to define the price of water needed to deploy the actions of the basin plan, we created five scenarios: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 10% financing to the actions proposed on the basin plan, assuming that the remainder percentage would be financed by the state fund of water resource and / or private sector; together with this, we took into consideration that not all capacity to pay should be used to determine the price of water, because using all of it woud not be of any gain to the user from the activity. Through the analysis of the scenarios of ability to pay, we observed the feasibility of recovering when 25% of the costs for plan of project implementation would come from the users, charging an average of R$ 0.0036/m³, i.e., half of the ability to pay the users, so that would not compromise their entire gain.
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