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<br />Compensation may also be appropriate for the party transferring water when <br />conditions are subsequently placed on the exercise of a water right to protect the public <br />interest or, more accurately, fulfill the state's "public trust" obligations. The public trust <br />doctrine, as enunciated in the 1983 California Supreme Court case National Audubon <br />Society v. Superior Court, 658 P.2d 709, requires states to balance the benefits achieved <br />through water appropriation,with the impacts on values such as environmental protection, <br />recreation, and fisheries. In many respects it establishes a retrospective policy framework <br />for water transfers by making it incumbent on a state regulatory agency to reconsider past <br />water decisions in light of changing water values. Harrison Dunning, a law professor at the <br />University of California at Davis and public trust doctrine authority, concludes that <br />what the Mono Lake [National Audubon] decision provided was approval of <br />a theory: that the ancient public trust doctrine may in the proper <br /> <br />circumstances serve to limit how much water may be diverted pursuant to an <br /> <br />appropriative right. Los Angeles (which was diverting water from Mono <br />Lake tributaries] was not ordered to give up anything. Instead, it was put on <br />notice that the environmentalist challenge could proceed and that the many <br />obvious questions would have to be resolved later on. These include factual <br />determinations as to the extent, if any, to which the city's diversions are <br />causing or will cause harm to the public trust uses of Mono Lake; the <br />methodology for integrating legitimate claims for protection pursuant to the <br />public trust doctrine with equally legitimate claims to use water pursuant to <br />the appropriation doctrine; whether diminution of use of water by an <br />appropriator can in any public trust circumstance constitute a taking of <br />property for which just compensation is owed; and, if so, the appropriate <br />taking analysis to apply.88 <br /> <br />44 <br />