Ruling The Waters

When Europeans first arrived at what is now California’s San Joaquin Valley, they found a vast landscape of wetlands, small ponds, riparian forests, and grasslands surrounding three large swampland lakes. What greets a visitor to the region today is a dramatically different view of mile after mile of row crops, vineyards, orchards, and grazing acreage—some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in the world. This remarkable transformation, with its enduring consequences, is at the center of Ruling the Waters, a legal, social, and environmental history of how western water law shaped, and was shaped by, the subjugation of the largest freshwater wetlands wildlife habitat in the West. At the heart of efforts to wrest arable land from the region was the Kern River, which rises in the Sierra Nevada and carries snowmelt to what was once a great network of lakes, sloughs, and marshes at the southern end of California’s Central Valley. In Ruling the Waters Douglas R. Littlefield describes how, over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pioneers and entrepreneurs diverted water out of this network of waterways to extract gold in the mountains and irrigate farms lower down the river, and how the law was made to accommodate these practices. Struggles over the Kern River’s water established one of the most important concepts in water law in some parts of the United States—that prior appropriation, dependent on the chronological order of diversions from waterways, could legally coexist with riparian rights, which restrict water usage to landownership directly next to a river or stream. Littlefield traces this concept to the 1886 California Supreme Court case of Lux v. Haggin—which pitted the giant farming and cattle company of Miller & Lux against a prominent land baron, James B. Haggin—and shows how the lawsuit profoundly shaped future waters issues, which in turn influenced water laws in other western states that were grappling with similar questions. Far from a dry legal history, Ruling the Waters tells a story with world-wide historical environmental ramifications, a tale of competing personalities and values and visions that forever changed both the economy and the ecology of the American West.

This open access textbook provides a concise introduction to economic approaches and mathematical methods for the study of water allocation and distribution problems. Written in an accessible and straightforward style, it discusses and analyzes central issues in integrated water resource management, water tariffs, water markets, and transboundary water management. By illustrating the interplay between the hydrological cycle and the rules and institutions that govern today’s water allocation policies, the authors develop a modern perspective on water management. Moreover, the book presents an in-depth assessment of the political and ethical dimensions of water management and its institutional embeddedness, by discussing distribution issues and issues of the enforceability of human rights in managing water resources. Given its scope, the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and engineering, as well as practitioners in the water sector, seeking a deeper understanding of economic approaches to the study of water management.

Water plays a key role in addressing the most pressing global challenges of our time, including climate change adaptation, food and energy security, environmental sustainability and the promotion of peace and stability. This comprehensive handbook explores the pivotal place of law and policy in efforts to ensure that water enables positive responses to these challenges and provides a basis for sound governance. The book reveals that significant progress has been made in recent decades to strengthen the governance of water resource management at different scales, including helping to address international and sub-national conflicts over transboundary water resources. It demonstrates that ‘effective’ laws and policies are fundamental drivers for the safe, equitable and sustainable utilization of water. However, it is also shown that what might constitute an effective law or policy related to water resources management is still hotly debated. As such, the handbook provides an important and definitive reference text for all studying water governance and management.

Science Be Dammed is an alarming reminder of the high stakes in the management—and perils in the mismanagement—of water in the western United States. It seems deceptively simple: even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning by decision-makers throughout the twentieth century, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made the least sustainable and most dangerous long-term decisions. Arguing that the science of the early twentieth century can shed new light on the mistakes at the heart of the over-allocation of the Colorado River, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck delve into rarely reported early studies, showing that scientists warned as early as the 1920s that there was not enough water for the farms and cities boosters wanted to build. Contrary to a common myth that the authors of the Colorado River Compact did the best they could with limited information, Kuhn and Fleck show that development boosters selectively chose the information needed to support their dreams, ignoring inconvenient science that suggested a more cautious approach. Today water managers are struggling to come to terms with the mistakes of the past. Focused on both science and policy, Kuhn and Fleck unravel the tangled web that has constructed the current crisis. With key decisions being made now, including negotiations for rules governing how the Colorado River water will be used after 2026, Science Be Dammed offers a clear-eyed path forward by looking back. Understanding how mistakes were made is crucial to understanding our contemporary problems. Science Be Dammed offers important lessons in the age of climate change about the necessity of seeking out the best science to support the decisions we make.

The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles. Destined to be the definitive story for the general public as well as policymakers, The Great Lakes Water Wars is a balanced, comprehensive look behind the scenes at the conflicts and compromises that are the past-and future-of this unique resource.

The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods-this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons-it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

A detailed study of the engagement of state law with indigenous rights to water in comparative legal and policy contexts.

Study conducted at the Ramnad District of Tamil Nadu, India.