Abstract
Water conflicts in the western United States increasingly arise from competition between traditional economic uses (especially irrigation, municipal supply and hydropower) and public uses (especially environmental protection and water-based recreation). Western United States water law, based on the prior appropriation doctrine, has always promoted maximizing ‘beneficial use’ of the resource and has effectively protected water allocations for traditional purposes. Public water uses also enjoy some legal protection, but it exists mostly on paper; in practice, neither statutory public interest provisions nor the non-statutory public trust doctrine has been widely effective. This paper identifies the relevant legal principles and briefly explains how they have failed to protect public water uses in the western United States.
Highlights
Over the past decade, the most intense water controversies in the western United States have involved conflicts between ecosystem needs — the habitat requirements of species facing extinction — and established, traditional water uses such as irrigation, municipal supply, and hydropower generation
This paper identifies the relevant legal principles and briefly explains how they have failed to protect public water uses in the western United States
The fiercest current struggle over water in the West is in the California Central Valley, where irrigation and municipal demands are clashing with the habitat needs of salmon and smelt protected by the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).[1]
Summary
Water conflicts in the western United States increasingly arise from competition between traditional economic uses (especially irrigation, municipal supply and hydropower) and public uses (especially environmental protection and water-based recreation). The fiercest current struggle over water in the West is in the California Central Valley, where irrigation and municipal demands are clashing with the habitat needs of salmon and smelt protected by the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).[1] These conflicts between traditional water uses and public uses, such as environmental protection and water-based recreation, are not new to the West.[2] Until the late 20th century, such conflicts typically arose from proposals for new dams that would destroy important stretches of free-flowing rivers; one such dispute, involving a proposed dam in Dinosaur National Monument, has been credited with launching the modern environmental movement.[3] Supreme Court cases involving such conflicts go back more than half a century: consider the 1955 case where the State of Oregon opposed federal licensing of a proposed hydropower dam on the Deschutes River because the dam would harm salmon populations.[4] A later case involved a challenge to the State of California’s restrictions on a new federal dam (built largely to supply irrigation water), imposed partly to protect whitewater recreation on the Stanislaus River.[5] As these cases might. It is crucial that the law governing water resources provide an appropriate means for ensuring that water will be available for important public uses as well as the traditional purposes of irrigation, hydropower, and municipal supply
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
