Modern Water Law provides a comprehensive text to study the range of legal issues and doctrines that affect water resources. This is a national book that uses many recent cases, bringing a fresh perspective to the field. The authors begin with private water use rights, including common law doctrines for riparian reasonable use and prior appropriation, as well as groundwater rights and the statutory schemes for administering water use rights. The book explores the range of public rights in water, including navigation, the public trust doctrine, federal reserved rights, and interstate water management. The book also introduces modern challenges and environmental protection goals, focusing on the energy-water nexus, water pollution, and endangered species conflicts. The final chapters combine these concepts in the context of complex watershed restoration challenges and water rights takings litigation.

Modernizing the Law of the River to reflect current and evolving values and interests

Environmental Change examines the impact of hundreds of federal court decisions on the policies and administration of the EPA since its inception in 1970. Having surveyed over 2,000 federal court decisions, Rosemary O'Leary presents case studies of five important policy areas: water quality, pesticides, toxic substances, air quality, and hazardous wastes. Compliance with court orders, O'Leary discovered, has become one of the EPA's top priorities, at times overshadowing congressional mandates and the authority of EPA administrators. For an agency often caught between the White House and Congressional agendas, the competing interests of industry and environmental groups, and turf battles with other federal agencies, O'Leary argues, judicial decision making is crucial in the public policy process. Environmental Change offers valuable information in the fields of public policy and environmental law.

This revised second edition is essential to everyone involved with water and water resources-complying with the myriad federal, state, and local laws and regulations that govern the use and management of water in our attempts to maintain, clean, usable water. It includes the law of water diversion and distribution; water resources development and protection; water treatment and land use; ocean dumping; oil and hazardous substances cleanup; riparian and non-riparian systems; Eastern permit systems; beneficial use; water codes; prior appropriation; surface and ground water; channel modifications; municipal water supply; irrigation; California Water Management Districts; Bureau of Reclamation; Corps of Engineers; Water Resources Development Act of 1986; SCS, TVA, BPA, NEA, CERCLA, CWA, SDWA, RCRA, and their substantial changes in the last four years; water resources planning and research; public use; ownership of beds and banks; wild and scenic rivers; river corridor and instream flow protection; flood insurance, Section 404 and Section 208; the Supreme Court and water conservation; heat dischargers; quality-based effluent limitations; state ground water programs; pretreatment; funding; enforcement; citizen suits; and many more vital topics.

This new edition begins by covering the long-established systems of private water rights (the appropriation doctrine and the riparian doctrine for surface waters and the various doctrines for groundwaters). Then it covers public rights, water quality regulation, and other environmental regulation primarily from the perspective of how these affect private water rights. The book also addresses interstate allocation and federal-state relations. There is one new principal case and many new notes. The notes in all the chapters have been updated.

This new edition begins by covering the long-established systems of private water rights (the appropriation doctrine and the riparian doctrine for surface waters and the various doctrines for groundwaters). Then it covers public rights, water quality regulation, and other environmental regulation primarily from the perspective of how these affect private water rights. The book addresses water distribution organizations, interstate allocation, and federal-state relations. There are some new principal cases in certain chapters. The notes in all the chapters have been extensively rewritten for brevity and have been updated. More international coverage has been added to the book.

As water becomes ever more important in a rapidly growing United States challenged by lessening firm-yield water reliability, the public needs to understand the myriads of quite different state-by-state water policies. States share surface water and groundwater sources that relate to each other conjunctively. Texans for example, should understand New Mexico water ownership and state policies because they share surface water and groundwater sources. Californians should understand Nevada’s water policies for the same reasons. Above all else, the people of the United States must realize that a water policy in one state can drastically impact water availability in neighboring states. Although the federal government has supra-legal authority over some state water policies and acts as the ultimate arbiter of interstate disputes, no one current book exists that explains the complicated relationships between state water policies with an analysis of federal water policies. Water Rights in the United States : A Guide through the Maze is a one-stop resource providing a state-by-state analysis of water ownership, regulatory agencies, and water polices. It explains the complicated relationships between state water policies and provides an analysis of federal water polices. How we manage these policies is of utmost importance to all Americans.