WSP08452 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

"'.' 138~ 01 d ,,- 182 Essetltia/s for Optimllm Use of GrOIl7l lter ReSOllTCes sive collections of basic data have been made in areas having serious water problems, Intelligent use of these basic data is essential if the problems are LO be solved, and this involves scientific analysis and interpretation, and inevitably some changes in tile pattern of development and me which caused the trouble, Some changes from the existing pattern are likely to bring up problems of increased costs, and who should pay them, And a well owner is likely to argue that, although his well may not serve the greatest good of the greatest number, it serves his needs admirably, and he has a legal right to continue using it. Thus optimum use of ground-water resources is dependent not only upon hydrologic essentials but also upon legal and economic essentials. Dean Little has asked each speaker at this conference to limit his paper to the field of his competence, and for me this would be the field of basic hydrologic data, For this paper, therefore, I shall take "optimum use" of ground-water resources to be the "best use that can be made under the circumsrances." In this way I can concentrate on rhe physical or hydrologic essentials for best use of the resource, after sketching in the circumstances that may limit or inhibit that best use. Of particular importance among these "circumstances" aTe the social customs and attitudes concerning a man's relation to water resources-in other word'i. the .prnhlem of water rig-hts. WATER RIGHTS Water rights become imporcant only when there is insufficient water. Both Colonial America and Mother England had sufficient rainfall for agriculture and for maintenance of surface and ground-water supplies in excess of the modest needs of the people, and il is not surprising that our history says very little about water rights until well into the 19th century. However, we can sunnise what our forebears might have thought of water rights if the subject had come up, by observing their actions with resp.ct [0 land rights. This js because a water right is recognized as real property, and our concepts of water righ ts reAect to a degree U1C c(;mcepts that have been developed with respect to landownership during the long struggle of mankind to develop and protect the dignity and status of the individual. An individual may acquire property either by his own elIorts or by lhe "accident of birth" which provjdes an estate with no expenditure of effort on his part. As we shall see. there are water rights which are appurtenant to the land (or real estate) and which exist regardless of the landowner's llse of or interest in water; and there are also water rights which exist only because of some one's actual use of the water. It wok several centuries for the common, average, or median man to attain sufficient dominion over a piece of land so that he could do as he pleased with it. and assign it to his heirs to do likewise. The heritage or our Western civilization includes an ancient history in which kings or chieftaiIlS had absolute dominion over all the land and other property (as well as the people) of their respective realms; the Magna Carta, which by extending the privilege of property ownership to a few lords became the basis for landownership by an increasing number of people; and the U, S. Constitution, which recognizes and guar<lntees protection or private pro- perty rights. During the century after the framing of the Constitution, when land in America was available to all who sought it, landownership was "absolute" in the sense that the owner had the right to use or dispose of land as he pleased. In recent decades., with an increasing population in a static land area, there has been progressive diminution in lhe righls and