Water Law Commons^™

A Human Face To Instream Flow: Indigenous Right To Water For Salmon And Fisheries, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

In the United States and throughout the world, there are many indigenous peoples whose culture and identity are closely connected to salmon and fisheries. Such salmon and fisheries are often dependent on maintaining adequate instream flows of water in rivers. Indigenous groups in the United States and in other countries have increasingly relied on indigenous human rights laws as a basis to keep water instream to maintain salmon and fisheries. This includes reliance on sources of international law such as the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the International …

California Should Lead The Nation In Controlling Agricultural Pollution, Helen H. Kang, Deborah Sivas

Publications

Agricultural runoff is one of the largest sources of pollution in the nation’s waterways. In recent years, scientific journals and the media have been filled with reports of toxic algae blooms and dead zones near and far: The Everglades, Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and San Francisco Bay-Delta. Agricultural pollution also threatens public health in communities that rely on tainted groundwater. In California alone, more than a quarter million residents in largely agricultural areas are served by water systems with degraded groundwater quality.

Salmon Lessons For The Delta Smelt: Unjustified Reliance On Hatcheries In The Usfws October 2019 Biological Opinion, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

Pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, in October 2019 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) of the Trump Administration issued a new Biological Opinion (BiOp) for coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project (2019 USFWS BiOp).

The Central Valley Project is operated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), and the State Water Project is operated by the California Department of Water Resources. The Central Valley Project and the State Water Project both divert freshwater from the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River watersheds, and the reduced freshwater flow resulting from these …

Of Hatcheries And Habitat: Old And New Conservation Assumptions In The Pacific Salmon Treaty, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

The 1985 Pacific Salmon Treaty between Canada and the United States was negotiated to deal with evidence that Pacific salmon stocks originating in Canada and the United States were in decline. The Pacific Salmon Treaty sought to establish total annual fishing limits for Canada and the United States that were consistent with the sustainable conservation of Pacific salmon stocks, and to base the total allowable catch for Canadian fishermen on forecasts of the total abundance of salmon. As the Pacific Salmon Treaty has been implemented, however, there has been a re-occuring pattern of annual abundance forecasts overestimating the actual abundance …

Fisheries Reliant On Aquifers: When Groundwater Extraction Depletes Surface Water Flows, Paul Stanton Kibel, Julie Gantenbein

Publications

IN CALIFORNIA, surface waters have historically been regulated as if they were unconnected to groundwater. Yet in reality, surface waters and groundwater are often hydrologically connected. Many of the rivers that support fisheries such as salmon and trout are hydrologically dependent on tributary groundwater to maintain instream flow. This means that when there is intensive pumping of tributary groundwater, the result can be reductions in instream flow and damage to fisheries. For this reason, stakeholders concerned with adequate instream flows for fisheries in California's rivers, streams, and creeks need to be effectively engaged in the implementation of California's Sustainable Groundwater …

An Aquifer Betrayed: The Monterey Desalinization Project At Odds With California Water Law, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

The California American Water Company's Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project (Cal-Am Project) is a proposed desalinization facility in Monterey County that was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in September 2018. The Cal- Am Project would treat water pumped from inland coastal groundwater aquifers-the Dune Sand Aquifer and the 180-Foot Aquifer-rather than water pumped directly from the ocean. The Cal-Am Project's pumping of these coastal aquifers is expected to result in increased seawater intrusion in groundwater.

The Marina Coast Water District and the City of Marina filed petitions with the California Supreme Court alleging violations of the California …

California Rushes In—Keeping Water Instream For Fisheries Without Federal Law, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

This Article examines the ways that federal law and federal agencies currently provide a legal basis to keep water instream for California fisheries, and the ways that California water law may be in a position to fill the regulatory gap that may be left if federal water law and federal agencies recede.

Following the introduction, Part I of the Article identifies the different ways that instream flow affects California fisheries. Part II then surveys federal laws and federal agencies that have traditionally supported efforts to keep water instream for California fisheries. In Part III, the Article presents examples of how …

Rivers That Depend On Aquifers: Drafting Sgma Groundwater Plans With Fisheries In Mind, Paul Stanton Kibel, Julie Gantenbein

Publications

Guidebook on rivers that depend on aquifers. Published by the Center on Urban and Environmental Law.

Also available at: https://ggucuel.org/fisheries.

Pueblo Indian Water Rights: Charting The Unknown, Richard W. Hughes

Publications

This article examines the so-far-unsuccessful efforts to judicially define and quantify the water rights appurtenant to the core land holdings of the 19 New Mexico Pueblos, many of whose lands straddle the Rio Grande. It explains that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has squarely held that Pueblo water rights are governed by federal, not state law, and are prior to those of any non-Indian appropriator, but also that the Tenth Circuit acknowledged that it could not say how those rights should be characterized. Part I of the article examines the course of the cases that have sought to achieve …

Damage To Fisheries By Dams: The Interplay Between International Water Law And International Fisheries Law, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

Following the introduction, Part One documents the effects of on-stream dams on fisheries, aquatic habitat and fishing-dependent communities. In Part Two, the Article examines how principles from international fisheries law (which has traditionally focused more on ocean fisheries than freshwater fisheries) apply in the transboundary river context. Part Three then identifies the rights of upstream/downstream nations under international water law pertaining to the impoundment and release of water from on-stream dams on waterways where fisheries are present. Next, in Part Four, the Article considers how international environmental impact assessment obligations relate to the construction and operation of on-stream dams. Finally, …

Passage And Flow Considered Anew: Wild Salmon Restoration Via Hyrdo Relicensing, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

The FERC hydro relicensing process in the United States has often provided an effective mechanism to modify the terms of dam operations to reduce the adverse impacts on fisheries, particularly impacts on wild Pacific Coast salmon. This experience with FERC relicensing suggests that a transparent and scientifically rigorous regulatory framework to periodically review and modify the way dams operate can play a critical role in the restoration of wild fish stocks.

Spring 2015 Utton Center Newsletter, Utton Center, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law

Publications

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Reservoir Operations To Adapt To 21st Century Expectations Of Climate And Social Change In The Willamette River Basin, Oregon, Kathleen M. Moore

Publications

Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water storage at the same time, these two uses are traded off as the reservoir fills during the transition from the wet to the dry season. Climate change, population growth, and development in the western US may exacerbate dry season water scarcity and increase winter flood risk, creating a need to …

Sea Level Rise, Saltwater Intrusion And Endangered Fisheries - Shifting Baselines For The Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Paul S. Kibel

Publications

UC Davis School of Law's March 2015 symposium on The Future of CEQA, out of which this article evolved, focused on how the substantive law governing the operation of the California Environmental Quality Act might change in the coming decades. In my presentation for the symposium's final panel, I suggested that certain changes in CEQA substantive law may well be driven by the increasing recognition that the background conditions against which projects will operate will themselves change significantly in the future.

The End Of Sustainability, Melinda Harm Benson, Robin Kundis Craig

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No abstract provided.

The End Of Sustainability, Melinda Harm Benson, Robin Kundis Craig

Publications

It is time to move past the concept of sustainability. The realities of the Anthropocene warrant this conclusion. They include unprecedented and irreversible rates of human-induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change. These factors combine to create an increasing likelihood of rapid, nonlinear, social and ecological regime changes. The recent failure of the Rio +20 provides an opportunity to collectively reexamine--and ultimately move past--the concept of sustainability as an environmental goal. We must face the impossibility of defining--let alone pursuing--a goal of "sustainability" in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty and …

Managing Complex Water Resource Systems For Ecological Integrity: Evaluating Tradeoffs And Uncertainty, Richard Morrison

Publications

Water resource systems often contain numerous components that are intertwined or even contradictory, such as power production, water delivery, recreation, and environmental needs. This complexity makes it difficult to holistically assess management alternatives. In addition, hydro climatic and ecological uncertainties complicate efforts to evaluate the impacts of management scenarios. We need new tools that are able to inform managers and researchers of the tradeoffs or consequences associated with flow alternatives, while also explicitly incorporating sources of uncertainty. My research addresses this limitation using two modeling approaches: stochastic system dynamics modeling and Bayesian network modeling. I developed a stochastic system dynamics …

Spring 2014 Utton Center Newsletter, Utton Center, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law

Publications

No abstract provided.

Developing The Law Of The River: The Integration Of Law And Policy Into Hydrologic And Socio-Economic Modeling Efforts In The Willamette River Basin, Adell Louise Amos

Publications

A legal and policy infrastructure -- referred to as a "law of the river" -- exists for every river basin in the U.S. an can be as important as natural processes in terms of managing the future of the resource. Because of the way that water law and policy have evolved in the U.S., this infrastructure involves a matrix of state and federal law that governs the choices that policymakers, end users, and agencies make. This "law of the river" provides the context in which decisions are made and not made. It also draws the boundaries within which decision makers …

Jump In Before It's Too Late: Protecting And Increasing Streamflows In New Mexico, Sharon Wirth

Publications

Freshwater ecosystems need adequate streamflow to supply clean water for humans and maintain healthy habitat for wildlife. Over-appropriation, overuse, climate change, and drought plague New Mexico's rivers, taxing many rivers beyond sustainability. Despite the myriad of problems caused by little or no water in our rivers, policies and procedures to protect and increase streamflows in New Mexico are limited. While most Western states have made demonstrable progress in alleviating various legal and technical barriers to protecting and increasing streamflows, New Mexico has made only limited, recent progress towards solutions for our drying rivers. This article takes a critical look at …

Water Governance Challenges In New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley: A Resilience Assessment, Melina Harm Benson, Dagmar Llewellyn, Ryan Morrison, Mark Stone

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No abstract provided.

A Salmon Eye Lens On Climate Adaption, Paul S. Kibel

Publications

This Article discusses the current gap in climate adaptation law and policy, emphasizing the potential role that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA) and California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) could play in filling this gap. It focuses on the provisions in these laws that establish that agency planning and decision-making should be based on the best available science, and notes that the best available science now confirms that GHG emission-induced climate change is happening now and will continue to happen during this century. This Article posits that the most appropriate and effective way to factor expected …

Joe M Stell Ombudsman Program - Taos Settlement Technical Work, Peggy Barroll

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No abstract provided.

Groundwater Challenges In Spain: Lessons From The Western Mancha Aquifer, Pedro Martinez-Santos

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No abstract provided.

Winter 2013 Utton Center Newsletter, Utton Center, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law

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No abstract provided.

Frameworks For Amending Reservoir Water Management, Ethan Mower, Leandro E. Miranda

Publications

Managing water storage and withdrawals in many reservoirs requires establishing seasonal targets for water levels (i.e., rule curves) that are influenced by regional precipitation and diverse water demands. Rule curves are established as an attempt to balance various water needs such as flood control, irrigation, and environmental benefits such as fish and wildlife management. The processes and challenges associated with amending rule curves to balance multiuse needs are complicated and mostly unfamiliar to non-US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) natural resource managers and to the public. To inform natural resource managers and the public we describe the policies and process …

A Water Rights Manual For Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Associations, Utton Center, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law, Zachary Carpenter, Gregory Chakalian, Darcy S. Bushnell

Publications

The Utton Center prepared this Water Rights Manual to assist Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Associations (MDWCAs) with the development, protection and management of their water rights.

This manual provides an introduction to and defines Water Rights in New Mexico, as well as to acquire and have recognized Water Rights. This document also covers water management and planning, and provides additional resources.

Settler Colonialism And Reclamation: Where American Indian Law And Natural Resources Law Meet, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Three hours west of Phoenix, Arizona, the Colorado River Indian Tribes (“CRIT”), a federally recognized tribe that includes over 3,700 enrolled members of Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Hopi descent, occupies a reservation nearly 300,000 acres in size. The CRIT was one of five tribes to have its water rights confirmed in the landmark case of Arizona v. California, and therefore has senior rights to 719,248 acre-feet of Colorado River water, nearly one-third of Arizona’s allocation. How the CRIT came to be a single federally recognized tribe composed of members from four indigenous peoples located on lands that were a fraction …

Selected Bibliography On Adjudications And New Mexico Water Management, Carol Romero-Wirth, Susan Kelly, Ernesto Longa

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No abstract provided.

Water Rights Management In New Mexico And Along The Middle Rio Grande: Is Awrm Sufficient?, Carol Romero-Wirth, Susan Kelly

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No abstract provided.