Suchergebnisse

This systematic review of New Mexico prior appropriation case law from 1883 to the present employs a thematic chronology in four parts spanning approximately three decades each, including the following topics. Part One covers the initial conflict between prior appropriation and riparian common law and early interpretations of the 1907 Water Act. In Part Two, courts contrast the 1907 Act with the old arid region doctrine and justify the integration of groundwater into prior appropriation. Diminishing supplies and increasing usage drive Part Three's concentration on proceedings to change places of use and points of diversion, at times deferring issues of priority or subordinating prior appropriation to other systems of allocation. Part Four explores progress of general stream adjudications, affirmation of prior appropriation against equitable apportionment and common use, and the expansion of power for priority enforcement subject to political barriers. The conclusion distinguishes between prior appropriation's vitality in principle and in practice, with a call to the New Mexico Legislature to enact statutes and provide adequate funding to meet New Mexico's present and future water needs.

In 2007, the 80th Texas Legislature enacted Senate Bill 3 on the 140th and last day of session. This bill was the third far-reaching piece of water legislation after Senate Bill 1 passed in 1997 and Senate Billl 2 passed in 2001. Collectively, these bills changed how Texas plans for future water needs, regulates groundwater, promotes conservation, studies the need for environmental flows balanced with population needs, and establishes environmental flow standards for Texas' rivers, bays, and estuaries. Senate Bill 3 created a process through which scientists, stakeholders, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality set environmental flow standards. Over 12 years have passed since Senate Bill 3 became law, allowing us to consider the efficacy of the enabling legislation and the resulting rules. In short, identifying and securing water for the environment has been difficult due to little if any unallocated water in the state's river basins and limitations in Senate Bill 3 and Texas Water Code. We identified seven options for the stakeholders and the state to consider to increase the protection of environmental flows while respecting private property rights: (1) protecting water-right owners that participate in forbearance agreements from cancellation, (2) pursuing cancellations and affirming abandonments, (3) requiring that cancelled or abandoned water be set-aside to meet environmental flow standards, (4) modernizing how surface-water use and diversions are tracked, (5) requiring water rights holders to demonstrate the pursuit of other water supplies before suspending environmental flows, (6) studying ways how environmental flows can co-exist and be protected within a prior-appropriation system, and (7) studying how dedications of water under existing water rights can be considered for tax credit or deductions so as to further incentivize transactions for environmental benefit. If implemented, these options could allow Texas and Texans to more closely achieve the desired outcomes hoped for from Senate Bill ...

August 1988. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; Partly financed by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Water scarcity in the Western US, through the lens of political ecology, can be understood as inextricably shaped by power dynamics, governance structures, and legal practices of resource allocation. Water allocation in the region is determined largely by the legal doctrine of Prior Appropriation, the 'first in time, first in right' principle. However, prior appropriation is fundamentally based in anthropocentric and settler colonial assumptions, and in light of drought, climate change, and shifting social and environmental values, the system has been critiqued as inadequate to meet contemporary water challenges. Despite challenging historical legacies, water managers in the Western US are developing a range of strategies to work around or within prior appropriation to secure environmental flows for rivers and aquatic species. In this article we use political ecology and diverse economies approaches to consider the challenges of, and challenges to, prior appropriation. We examine a diverse set of practices, work-arounds, and creative strategies being used to secure instream flows, and discuss how these strategies affirm or challenge prior appropriation, how they reinforce or challenge inequities, and how they reform or re-envision water allocation in ways that may open up potential for social and environmental justice.

In this volume, Gordon Morris Bakken traces the distinctive development of western legal history. The contributors' essays provide succinct descriptions of major cases, legislation, and individual western states' constitutional provisions that are unique in the American legal system. To assist the reader, the volume is organized by subject, including natural resources, municipal authority, business regulation, American Indian sovereignty and water rights, women, and Mormons. ; https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/facw_books/1056/thumbnail.jpg

"GAO/NSIAD-92-320BR." ; "September 1992." ; "B-250179"--P. 1. ; Cover title. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Innovative and collaborative approaches are making headway in addressing dwindling water resources in the American west. Watershed organizations that emphasize the virtue of cooperative conservation to preserve and protect a resource we value for its ecological and cultural importance are springing up across the region. Throughout the western states, irrigators, farmers, ranchers, local governments, recreationists, and conservationists are forming coalitions to address water management concerns. The necessity of preserving our water resource is decreasingly viewed as only a "green" mission. Water users are coming to realize that we all have a stake in water conservation. Through our cooperative conservation successes, we have demonstrated that a "top-down" regulatory approach to water management may not always lead to the most beneficial or fair results. The win-lose nature of the "top-down" approach can be avoided to ensure wiser and more effective results.