Water Law Commons^™

Whose Water? Corporatization Of A Common Good, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter encourages readers to think of agricultural communities in the era of climate change-induced droughts and population growth similar to when western Pennsylvania’s steel industry collapsed in the 1980s. If water must flow uphill to money, it should not leave a dust bowl behind. While this chapter’s proposals to address the effects on community build on examples of water reallocation where those effects have been addressed, both the just-transition literature and the experiences of some of the towns successfully adapting to abrupt changes in their economic tissue can offer lessons for areas suffering big water losses. In addition, privatization …

Bridging The Safe Drinking Water Gap For California’S Rural Poor, Camille Pannu

Faculty Scholarship

Spurred by decades of inaction and continued exposure to unsafe drinking water, community leaders from California’s disadvantaged communities (DACs) advocated for the creation of a human right to water under state law. Shortly thereafter, the California Legislature put forward a bond to finance much needed water infrastructure improvements and drought relief interventions across the state. Voters approved the $7.45 billion bond, which reserved millions of dollars of funding for DACs with persistent water quality problems. In setting aside those funds, the Legislature acknowledged that decades of disinvestment in rural, disadvantaged communities had created severe water contamination, limited water access, and …

Solving The Cso Conundrum: Green Infrastructure And The Unfulfilled Promise Of Federal-Municipal Cooperation, Casswell F. Holloway, Carter H. Strickland Jr., Michael B. Gerrard, Daniel M. Firger

Faculty Scholarship

Faced with mounting infrastructure construction costs and more frequent and severe weather events due to climate change, cities across the country are managing the water pollution challenges of stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflows through new and innovative "green infrastructure" mechanisms that mimic, maintain, or restore natural hydrological features in the urban landscape. When utilized properly, such mechanisms can obviate the need for more expensive pipes, storage facilities, and other traditional "grey infrastructure" features, so named to acknowledge the vast amounts of concrete and other materials with high embedded energy necessary in their construction. Green infrastructure can also provide substantial …

The Latest Red River Rivalry: The Supreme Court's Recent Decision Regarding The Red River Compact, Luke W. Davis, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

On June 13, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in a “Red River Rivalry” with much greater implications than the annual football game. In Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, the court sided entirely with Oklahoma in that state’s dispute with Texas over the allocation of Red River water. This decision will have considerable impact on Texas’ ability to meet its ever-growing water needs. Moreover, the decision could be consequential for other interstate water compacts and the states relying on the rivers and tributaries governed by those agreements.

Drinking Water And Exclusion: A Case Study From California’S Central Valley, Camille Pannu

Faculty Scholarship

The American West is notorious for its water wars, and California’s complex water allocation and governance challenges serve as a bellwether for contemporary water governance across western states. Policy makers and environmental advocates typically represent California’s water woes as a regulatory problem — a failure to balance the needs of growing urban populations with ecological preservation and agricultural irrigation. These debates, however, often elide the issue of water deprivation, and they do not adequately address the concerns of an important constituency: low-income, rural communities.

This Comment argues that a focus on regulation misses a fundamental feature of water inequality: the …

Managing Agricultural Water Use During Drought: An Analysis Of Contemporary Policies Governing Georgia's Flint River Basin, Mark Masters, Ronald Cummings, Brigham Daniels, Kristen Rowles, Douglas Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

State Control Of Great Lakes Water Diversion, J. David Prince

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the law relevant to the issue of interbasin diversion of Great Lakes water, the policies reflected in that law, and the limitations of the law on such diversions and on the ability of the Great Lakes states to control proposed diversions. It concludes with an argument for regional as opposed to national or state-by-state decision making on the issue of diversions and a suggested mechanism for facilitating such regional decision making.