Modern Water Law, Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections

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. This second edition continues the logical organization that presents the field in appropriate depth for a semester course, with clear explanations and helpful questions and comments.

---

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 next explores the range of public rights in water, including navigation, the public trust doctrine, federal reserved rights for tribal and public lands, and interstate water management. The book then explores 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.

The second edition begins with entirely new coverage of the human right to water, including a 2017 federal case regarding constitutional rights in the wake of the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Other major changes and developments include new cases on water use permitting, "takings" of private water rights, tribal rights to groundwater, interstate water disputes, and U.S.-Mexico water diplomacy. The second edition continues the logical organization that presents the field in appropriate depth for a semester course, with clear explanations and helpful questions and comments.