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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal snowmelt, not rainfall, and therefore receive most of their total annual runoff in only a three or four month period from April through July.4 As a consequence of these conditions, intensive agriculture usually cannot be sustained without the benefit of extensive irrigation. Also, in order to have reliable, year-round and year-to-year water supplies, reservoirs are needed to store peak flows for later distribution in the low runoff months and drier years. These physical circumstances have led to the development of legal and institutional systems for defining rights in and to the use of water that are unique to the West. These are very briefly outlined below. Western Water Law In the East, South, and Midwest, where rainfall is generally sufficient for growing crops and where stream flows are sustained by rainfall on a relatively uniform basis, states adopted the English common law riparian doctrine. Under the riparian system, only those who own land bordering a river are entitled to make "reasonable use" of the water of that river on the same land, and only then if their use does not interfere with "reasonable uses" by others who also own land adjacent to the same river (be they upstream of or downstream from the specified riparian user). "Reasonable use" is typically not quantified.5 Given the relative scarcity of rainfall in the West, and the variability of runoff within a year and from year to year, the western states developed a different legal system for allocating water supplies. It is known as the doctrine of prior appropriation. The doctrine initially developed as the custom of the ' The major exceptions are the coastal rivers in California, Oregon, and Washington and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in the Central Valley of California, where winter rainfall accounts for a large percentage of annual stream flows, with peak flows occurring in December, January, and February. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers are also fed by snowmelt runoff from the Sierra Nevada and thus typically experience a second peak of runoff in the April through June timeframe. s For a general description of the riparian doctrine, see D. GETCHES, WATER LAW IN A NUTSHELL 15-73 (3d ed. 1997). 4