CA • No settlement, no giving up either

APRIL 22 | Settlement efforts in the long-running San Joaquin river litigation in central California won't be ending soon, participants indicated last week. That came as a disappointment to some participants hoping the future of more tha n10,000 farms in the area might be resolved; but it also signalled a willingness to continue the conversation with an eye to a solution that might be in sight.
The participants in the talks include the Natural Resources Defense Council and the local Friant Water Users Authority; the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation almost certainly would have a hand in any final determinations.
The dispute grows out of concern by the Council that enough water be set aside for fish, and a 1983 lawsuit over that subject. It has turned into a battle over water rights, however, and determination of how much can be set aside for fish. [see Capital Press, April 21]

TX • Allegations of fraud blow up water talks

APRIL 22 | A massive water agreement reached in late March may have been sundered in mid-April when a water district official asked a city council - the two entities are parties to the agreement - " did the city enter into the contract in a fraudulent manner?”
The deal involves purchase of as much as 5.5 billion gallons (over the next two decades) by the city of Sugar from the Fort Bend County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1.
District board member Leon Anhaiser said the city is quietly challenging the district's rights to the water, and said the city is planning to ask the Texas Legislature for a measure which would allow it to annex and dissolve the water district.
City council members later said that they did have in mind the dissolution of the district, and felt compelled to negotiate with it. However, one said he understood that if the district were dissolved, the water rights would return to the state of Texas. [see Fort Bend Now, April 22.]

WA • Tri-city water deal hatched

APRIL 21 | One of the most valuable pieces of property in the Olympia, Washington area is the old Olympia brewery at the neighboring city of Tumwater. It was valuable not least because of the large water rights the Olympia brewery controlled, and when that company shut the plant down, the future of those water rights became one of the region's big unanswered questions.
The buyer of the plant, All American Bottled Water, had need of a considerable supply of water, but not nearly as much as its beer-making predecessor had used.
For several weeks officials from Olympia, Tumwater and a third nearby community, Lacey, met with officials from All American, and this week released a tentative agreement. It still requires approval from city councils and from state regulators.
The agreement calls for joint purchase by the cities of all of the former brewery's water rights, with an agreed guarantee to All American to supply its water needs out of the overall supply. The cities would pay $1,750 per acre foot of water. The state Department of Ecology has estimated about 7,000 acre-feet may be available, but All American suggested the amount may be smaller. The water would be transferable in the future, and All American's right to it would rely on its use of it; failure to use it over a protracted period would lead to its forfeiture by the company.
The deall apparently puts to rest what had appeared to be a major lawsuit in the making, when the city of Olympia on February 13 filed to condemn All American's water right claims. [see the Olympia Olympian, April 22]

CO • Recreation rights stave off change

APRIL 19 | Colorado recreation groups continue to stave off agricultural attempts to throw sharp limits around the amount of water which can be held as rights for recreation purposes.
The measure sought by farm interests is Colorado Senate Bill 37, which critics say would givewater right now used for recreation - most notably kayaking - into a limited and secondary status. The measure passed the Senate, but controversy developed over the last couple of months, and the measure appears to be on hold in the House. Efforts at compromise were, however, underway by mid-April. [see the Sterling (CO) Journal-Advocate, April 18]

TAKING ON THE MEXICO CITY FORUM A guest opinion in the Cook County News Herald of Grand Marais, Minnesota, blasted the approach taken at the March Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City which equated water rights with human rights.
"After the first day of the meeting, however, it became clear that the government and corporate agents were only interested in turning water management into a business opportunity, whereupon the NGOs and activists established an alternative forum intent on identifying access to clean water as a fundamental right . . . If we accept the position that water is a common good, and an inalienable right shared by all people, does that mean that folks in China or France have as much right to Lake Superior’s water as we do?
Perhaps we would be better served if we didn’t use the concept of human rights to justify our control of Lake Superior’s water, but rather, focused on Cibber’s observation that possession is eleven points in the law."