Law Commons^™

Borderless Commons Under Attack? Reconciling Recent Supreme Court Decisions With Watershed Scale Management, Mike Pease, Olen Paul Matthews

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

Water managers have long called for management at watershed scales, instead of using hydrologically arbitrary boundaries like political borders. Considerable effort has been made in recent years to manage watersheds more holistically, but efforts to transfer water across state boundaries have been problematic, thwarted by legal and political obstacles. In Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann the transferability of water across state boundaries has been reviewed by the Supreme Court. Tarrant, a water district in Texas, attempted to reallocate water from Oklahoma. The U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the case narrowly, focusing on the wording of the Compact, and determined Congress …