Water Law Commons^™

California Water Reallocation: Where'd You Get That?, Damian Park

Economics

When thirsty, Californians often avoid going to the market for more water. Instead, they might borrow some from their rich neighbors, they might sue them or more commonly, they simply take more from users without much of a voice (e.g. the fish or future generations). These alternatives are often superior to using markets. Within markets, a surprising detail emerges – it is uncommon for farmers to fallow fields in order to sell water to another user. Rather, many water transfers are structured so sellers can have their cake and eat it too. While some of these transfers rightly bring about …

Don't Go Near The Water: Following The Fate Of The Clean Water Rule, Elizabeth R. Mylin

Duquesne Law Review

On August 28, 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers released their hotly debated Clean Water Rule (the Rule) redefining what are federally protected jurisdictional "waters of the United States." The Rule clarifies, and attempts to resolve, years of different interpretation and confusing rulings by the Supreme Court on which waterways are under the jurisdiction of the federal government and therefore subject to regulations under the Clean Water Act. This article addresses which waters are explicitly covered under the Rule and how opponents of this definition are distorting the plain language of the Rule. …

Law In The Time Of Cholera, Rhett B. Larson

Notre Dame Law Review

Thousands die each day from infections related to water, as evidenced in the ongoing crises of cholera in Haiti, Zika in the Western Hemisphere, and Legionnaires’ Disease in Flint, Michigan. Yet water law focuses primarily on two agendas. First, the “Blue Agenda” aims to provide an equitable allocation of water to individuals and communities while encouraging sustainable water management. Second, the “Green Agenda” aims to efficiently protect water in the natural environment from pollution. These two agendas often ignore, and can be inconsistent with, the “Red Agenda.” The Red Agenda addresses prevention of waterborne infections, like cholera, and the habitat …

Valuing Sacred Tribal Waters Within Prior Appropriation, Michelle Bryan

Faculty Law Review Articles

Throughout the world water plays a central role in the spirituality of indigenous peoples. Focusing on the American West, this article first describes how tribal water needs touch upon the sacred and then explains how both federal law and state prior appropriation doctrine fail to adequately protect these important sacred views of water. Pivoting away from the classic federal law arguments, the article then advocates for an evolution in state water law regimes to provide yet unrecognized protections for tribal sacred waters. Because international law plays an increasing role in this issue, the article also explores case studies from Ireland, …

Regime Shifts And Panarchies In Regional Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems, Barbara Cosens

Articles

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate …

Changing Currents: Climate Change And Stakeholder Involvement In The Colorado River Basin, Kristen M. Dikeman

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Owning Groundwater: The Example Of Mississippi V. Tennessee, Christine A. Klein

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Mississippi v. Tennessee, a case currently on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket, Mississippi claims that it owns all groundwater stored underneath its borders that does not cross into Tennessee under “natural predevelopment” conditions—before the advent of modern well technology. Mississippi seeks more than six hundred million dollars for pumping by Tennessee wells that tap into a geologic formation that underlies both states. This is a remarkable claim that departs from the almost uniformly established proposition that the states do not “own” the water within their borders, but instead are authorized to manage that water for the “use” of …

Chapter 594: Making California’S Water Supply Planning Process More Fluid With Large-Scale Development Projects, Kyle Sproul

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Connecting The “Drops” Of California Water Data: Chapter 506: The Open And Transparent Water Data Act, J. Gage Marchini

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cannabis And Water Management: International Regulation And The Legal Framework Of The European Union, Maria E. Milanes-Murcia

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chile, The Biobio, And The Future Of The Columbia River Basin, Jerrold A. Long

Articles

No abstract provided.

Water Valuation And Utility Rates, Amy Hardberger

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

As I’ve worked on this topic, it really has evolved. I was thrown into land use, but land use opened my eyes to new water tools. Nationwide there is a shift towards conservation of water and water sustainability. Land use might be the “ace-in-the-hole,” not the simple act of turning the water off when you brush your teeth—even though I want you to do that.

What’s important when talking about how we are going to survive, is “where are we going?” Because cities are so overpopulated, we are moving out of rural areas and into cities. This has caught the …

The Colorado River Revisited, Jason Anthony Robison

University of Colorado Law Review

Fifty years ago, former Stanford Law School Dean Charles Meyers published The Colorado River, 19 STAN. L. REV. 1 (1966), arguably the most famous piece of legal scholarship ever written on this vital water source and the complex body of laws governing its flows-colloquially, the "Law of the River." That piece and a companion, The Colorado River: The Treaty with Mexico, 19 STAN. L. REV. 367 (1967), offered seminal accounts of the legal histories, doctrinal features, and unresolved perplexities of the Law of the River's international and interstate allocation framework. Five decades later, between thirty-five and forty million U.S. residents …

Evaluating Stock-Trading Practices And Their Regulation, Merritt B. Fox, Kevin S. Haeberle

Faculty Scholarship

High-frequency trading, dark pools, and the practices associated with them have come under tremendous scrutiny lately, giving rise to much hot rhetoric. Missing from the discussion, however, is a principled, comprehensive standard for evaluating such practices and the law that governs them. This Article fills that gap by providing a general framework for making serious normative judgments about stock-trading behavior and its regulation. In particular, we argue that such practices and laws should be evaluated with an eye to the secondary trading market’s impact on four main aspects of our economy: the use of existing productive capacity, the allocation of …

Center For Biological Diversity V. Jewell, Kirsa Shelkey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Following years of pressure to list the upper Missouri River population of Arctic grayling as an endangered or threatened species, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service issued a 2014 Finding that listing the fish was “not warranted at this time.” The Service relied on voluntary Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances in the Big Hole River Basin to determine that listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act was not met and therefore listing was not necessary. Ultimately, the court deferred to agency expertise and found that the Service’s decision not to list the Arctic grayling was reasonable.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Julia Wyman's Post: The Threat Of Marine Debris 12-13-2016, Julia Wyman

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

California’S Curse: Perpetual Drought And Persistent Land Development, Gabrielle Kavounas

San Diego Law Review

This Comment argues that the California state legislature should take direct control of private water use rights through legislation that amends California’sConstitution Article X, Section 2, providing the state with the police powerto take back private water rights and centralize control over water management and distribution.[1] It also recommends imposing higher requirements for land development and water agency cooperation in standard form, state-controlled“general plans” to create efficiency in distributing water throughout the stateand in planning new land developments. The public trust doctrine, eminentdomain doctrine, and regulatory takings doctrine are possible justifications the state could use to effectuate the new legislation. …

Inefficient Efficiency: Crying Over Spilled Water, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

As the drought in Western states worsens, the agricultural sector is being criticized for failing to adopt technical responses, such as shifting to less water-demanding crops and state-of-the-art irrigation systems, in a timely manner. However, these responses can have the reverse effect: they can increase water consumption. Technological responses alone are insufficient to reduce water consumption if unaccompanied by changes in how the law defines and allocates water rights. This paper proposes a redefinition of water rights to ensure that changes in crops or irrigation techniques are socially efficient.

In the West, which uses the doctrine of prior appropriation to …

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2016, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.

Aboriginal Consultation In Canadian Water Negotiations:The Mackenzie Bilateral Water Management Agreements, Andrea Beck

Dalhousie Law Journal

Due to constitutional protection of Aboriginal water rights, the Canadian government has a duty to consult Aboriginal peoples in water-related decision making. In 2015, Alberta and the Northwest Territories signed an agreement for managing their shared waters in the Mackenzie River Basin. In light of Canada's record, observers have praised the preceding negotiation process as pathbreaking due to its high level of Aboriginal involvement. To evaluate such claims, this paper analyzes Aboriginal consultations in the 2011-2015 NWT-Alberta transboundary water negotiation. The comparative case study reaches the following conclusions. In their bilateral water negotiation, the two jurisdictions differed markedly in terns …