Water Laws In The United States

Law is fundamental to all societies, thus it makes sense that we have laws in place for one of, if not the most important material to our survival. Water. Water is a finite resource that is used in everyday life, from drinking to agriculture. Laws change over time and place, which could be viewed as an evolution; ever changing and strange at times.

Law has been in human society since the dawn of civilization and even before that. And water has been an integral part. But the history of water law is too expansive to focus entirely on, thus this paper is going to focus on the laws in the United States. The first “laws” were conceived by Native Americans who used lands for specific seasons, yet didn’t believe in land ownership.

Early Spanish

explorers brought law with them to the West, and were also seeking resources to use for building, specifically ore. The mines used more water than domestic use, and the laws were governed by the Crown which sought to provide for royalty, and the royalty wanted expensive ores. The law allocated water to towns and then to induvial, but only after enough had been provided to the town. The law also stressed fair allotment of water.
In the Eastern area of the U.S., the law was governed by English law.

Since the water is abundant in the Eastern area, there were relatively few conflict surrounding it. Since there are similar water levels to that in England, there was no need to create a whole new set of laws for the Americas.

The law that was “created” is called riparian doctrine (Dravnieks, D. (2001)) which sees the water from rivers and lakes as an amenity, which landowners were allowed to use for mostly domestic purposes. The main requirement of landowners was that there were to leave rivers clean, and not to take too much. These laws changed during the industrial revolution to meet the needs of an increased demand in water.

Back west the water laws also changed during the gold rush so that they didn’t need to own the land in order to receive water, because miner and prospectors didn’t want to pay for land. The law that was implemented would eventually turn into what is currently called prior appropriation which followed a hierarchy of rules which is based on what the water is used for and who gets the water first and the beneficial use of said water. The system is based on a first come first serve basis, thus the most junior purveyors receive the lowest priority for receiving

water.
There are also laws in place for Native American reservations which uses parts of both riparian law and prior appropriation. Per Britton:
The legal foundation for Indian water rights is the 1908 U.S.

Supreme Court case Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564, 28 S. Ct. 207, 52 L. Ed. 340. That case involved a Montana Indian reservation that had a river as one of its borders. After the reservation was established, non-Indian settlers diverted the river's water, claiming that they had appropriated the water after the reservation was created but before the Indians had begun to use the water themselves. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the settlers, finding that when the reservation was created, reserved water rights for the Indians were necessarily implied. It was unreasonable, the Court argued, to assume that Indians would accept lands for farming and grazing purposes without also reserving the water that would make those activities

possible.
Of course, there are special interest groups in the U.S. government that find new and better laws to implement as to preserve the environment. One of these organizations is the Environmental Protection Agency. They helped to develop the standards for clean drinking water, which is called the Clean Water Act. This act of legislature raised the standard for water, made several past actions unlawful such as dumping, and gave the EPA authority to implement pollution control programs.

There are several law safeguards in place for different water safety concerns set in place by the EPA. The list currently covers: microorganism, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals, and radionuclides. Per the EPA website there is a comprehensive list of the different types of each contaminant, acceptable levels, and potential health difficulties that are associated with each. As such here is a picture of the list (EPA).

In recent time, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of concern surrounding water and the concern has been rightfully placed. With water laws in place it become easier to manage and maintain a healthy relationship with the environment and how we expend our finite resources. To one, in recent times, the political climate has been feeling like there has been no care for the environment which should only advocate for a stronger desire for a government that care for the environment. As time goes on we as a people need to continue to enforce and improve the strength of the laws so that we will not have to deal with the major consequences that negligence will lead to