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Water Law Transitions, Robert H. Abrams

Journal Publications

The history of water law throughout the United States is dynamic. Beginning with the inherited doctrine of English common law natural flow riparianism, the changes in law can be described as instrumentalist in the sense that "judges and legislatures made this branch of water law an instrument of pro-developmental policy." When the natural flow doctrine's requirement that the stream flow down to lower owners undiminished as to quantity and quality clashed with the needs of the extensive utilization of water powered mills in the nineteenth century, the courts pioneered an American doctrine of reasonable use riparianism that would sustain water-dependent …