Water rights and water fights

National water issues are difficult to quantify, partly because many rules and regulations that affect users, including golf courses, are made on the local level and are different everywhere. Water issues often are also political issues that pit states against states, cities against cities and neighborhoods against neighborhoods.

While a state may make a law that requires new or established golf courses to accept effluent water, it is the local or regional water districts that implement that law. Also, water-rights laws vary tremendously by state because many subscribe to different legal theories of water allocation.

East of the Mississippi and in certain western states, the doctrine of riparian rights has been the underlying theory behind water law. "Riparian" refers to land adjoining a stream, lake or tidal body of water. As long as they don't substantially interfere with the enjoyment of others who hold such rights downstream or upstream, riparian owners may withdraw water for reasonable use, impound streams and make other economic use of the water. Riparian law was the doctrine used to allocate water supplies in areas of ample supply until the early 20th century.

With the growth of urban water supply systems and large-scale urban and industrial pollution, various public policies and programs have superseded riparian doctrine in many areas today. Still, the fundamental differences persist in the way people in different parts of the country think about water and their rights to it.

In the western United States, especially the arid states, the doctrine of prior appropriation prevails. Water rights have been completely severed from the ownership of land, and no riparian rights are recognized. Landowners in the West have no recognized vested interest in streams that flow across or past their land and they must separately purchase the right to water. All water is declared to be public and subject to appropriation on the basis of the "first-in-time, first-in-right" principle. Even the use of wells is usually controlled by permits.

-- K.H.