A River Used to Run Through It: Protecting the Public Right to a Sustainable Water System

• Author: Samuel C. Yang
• Position: J.D. candidate, class of 2022, Harvard Law School
• Pages: 67-117

NOTES

A River Used to Run Through It: Protecting the

Public Right to a Sustainable Water System

SAMUEL C. YANG*

ABSTRACT

There is no way around it—we use too much water. As population growth

and climate change continue on their collision course, the prospect of a cata-

strophic water crisis looms large on the horizon, especially in the United States.

Here, half of the country still abides by a prior appropriation system that has

been an ineffective way to manage the shortages caused by inadequate manage-

ment, sky-high demand, and drought. Some have attempted to remedy this sys-

tem by leveraging the public trust doctrine, a mostly fruitless approach thus far.

This Article argues that a better solution might be the use of the public nuisance

doctrine, a well-established property doctrine that draws on limits inherent to all

property rights (and especially to the curious category of water rights). A success-

ful public nuisance claim would also establish a public right to a sustainable water

system, and this Article explores the contours of such a right, drawing on existing

precedent on wetlands and floodplains as a model. Finally, this Article addresses

potential takings claims and arguments that public nuisance and prior appropria-

tion are incompatible. Ultimately, it concludes that recognizing the public’s right

to a sustainable water system—and protecting that right through the enforcement

of public nuisance claims—upholds the principles of sustainability, equity, and jus-

tice that prior appropriation originally sought to promote and protect.

* J.D. candidate, class of 2022, Harvard Law School. © 2022, Samuel Yang. My deepest gratitude to

Professor Joseph William Singer, whose investment in his students is unparalleled and whose

supervision of this Article has changed how I think about the law, property, and people. As always,

special thanks to my family, who welcomed me home during a very strange year. Finally, a big thank

you to the staff and editors of the Georgetown Environmental Law Review. Like good environmentalists,

they left this Article much better than they found it. All mistakes are my own.

67

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

I. The Legal Framework For Water Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

A. The Prior Appropriation System (and its Limits) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

B. Understanding the Water Right. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

1. The Role of Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

2. Inherent Limits on Property Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

a. The Lockean Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

b. The Harm Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

c. The Monopoly Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

3. Inherent Limits on Water Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

C. The Public Trust Doctrine (and its Limits) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

II. Introducing The Public Nuisance Doctrine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

A. Reconnecting With the Roots of the Public Nuisance . . . . . . . . . . . 83

1. Substantial and Unreasonable Interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

2. Specific Types of Common Law Conduct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

3. Relationship to Statutes and Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

4. Control and Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

5. Other Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

B. The Relationship Between Public Trust, Public Nuisance,

and Prior Appropriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

III. Defining The Public Water Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

A. Wetlands and Floodplains as a Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

1. The Interconnected Nature of the Water Resource . . . . . . . . . 96

2. The Irreplaceable and Endangered Status of Water Resources . 98

B. Setting Standards for the Public Water Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

1. The “Natural State” Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

2. The “Do No Harm” Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

IV. Addressing Concerns With The Public Nuisance Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

A. What’s Left of Prior Appropriation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

B. The Takings Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

1. “Background Principles” of Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

2. Takings Under Penn Central . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

3. Per Se Takings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

C. Identifying a Plaintiff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

D. Philosophical Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

V. A Note About Finality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

68 THE GEORGETOWN ENV’T LAW REVIEW [Vol. 34:67

INTRODUCTION

Traditional tribal fishing areas without fish.

1

Thousands of jobs evaporat-

ing into dry desert air.

2

Cities losing access to water for basic municipal func-

tions.

3

States embroiled in bitter lawsuits over disappearing rivers.

4

Yesterday’s fever

dreams of post-apocalyptic dystopia are rapidly becoming today’s reality—and glimpses

of tomorrow’s global crisis.

5

Water shortages, exacerbated by climate change and drought,

are no longer a hypothetical fear. This new reality is arriving especially quickly in the

American West, where natural aridity has collided with spectacular human ambition.

6

Droughts and water shortages are happening now and show no sign of going away.

7

Such terrible events should be met with action and innovation. When a deadly bout

of smog in 1948 killed twenty residents of Donora, Pennsylvania and saddled thou-

sands of others with lasting health effects, the government responded by convening a

national air pollution conference in 1950 and (after more deadly smog events else-

where) eventually passed the Clean Air Act in 1963.

8

Similarly, in the 1950s and

’60s, as increasingly polluted rivers began catching fire, one particularly notable fire

on the Cuyahoga River merged with political will and savvy to precipitate the Clean

Water Act.

9

But even allowing for the decades it can take to bring about meaningful

change, individuals and governments alike have failed to respond adequately to our

impending water crisis.

10

Worse, they have actively contributed to the problem with

flawed decision-making and stubborn, bad habits.

11

Compounding this crisis is a rigid legal system that seems frozen in time and

constrains any attempt to bring water usage back to sustainable levels. The prior

1. See Gordan Gregory, Re-watering Nevada’s Dying Walker Lake, HIGH COUNTRY NEWS (Aug. 10,

2011), https://perma.cc/ML4R-PJEE.

2. See Sena Christian, How One California Farmer is Battling the Worst Drought in 1,200 Years,

ENSIA (Mar. 26, 2015), https://perma.cc/672X-X2S8.

3. See Mychel Matthews, Water Curtailment or None, Groundwater Users Adjust to Unpredictable

Supplies, TIMES-NEWS (Jun. 25, 2019), https://perma.cc/EY3A-PNLN.

4. See Paige Blankenbuehler, How Best to Share the Disappearing Colorado River, HIGH COUNTRY

NEWS (Dec. 20, 2018), https://perma.cc/G6JJ-72KE.

5. See generally Fiona Harvey, Water Shortages to be Key Environmental Challenge of the Century,

NASA Warns, THE GUARDIAN (May 16, 2018), https://perma.cc/DM4R-YRAD.

6. See Sam Metz, Water Shortages in Western United States More Likely Than Previously Thought, DENVER

POST (Sept. 16, 2020), https://perma.cc/3S3N-4WU5; Delaney Snaadt, Water Crisis in the West, ARCGIS

STORYMAPS (Sept. 27, 2019), https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7dcc24f933a04e9e972b36914a9c66b7/print.

7. See Kasha Patel, Drought Persists in the U.S. Southwest, EARTH OBSERVATORY (last visited Oct. 18,

2021), https://perma.cc/3WY3-GQ2S; Luke Runyon, Dry and Getting Drier: Water Scarcity in Southwest is

the New Norm, Study Says, CRONKITE NEWS (Nov. 29, 2018), https://perma.cc/6KS5-HSXM.

8. See Lorraine Boissoneault, The Deadly Donora Smog of 1948 Spurred Environmental Protection—

But Have We Forgotten the Lesson?, SMITHSONIAN MAG. (Oct. 26, 2018), https://perma.cc/3GM7-3XSG.

9. Although the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969 captured the national imagination and is sometimes credited

with triggering the CWA’s passage, historians have noted since that the fire was widely misreported at the time

and perhaps only gained notoriety because of preexisting environmental movements. See generally The Myth of

the Cuyahoga River Fire, SCI. HIST. INST. (May 28, 2019), https://perma.cc/3BH3-LKH2.

10. See, e.g., Abrahm Lustgarten, How Much Water Does the West Really Have?, PROPUBLICA (July

17, 2015), https://perma.cc/JC9C-2NGW.

11. See, e.g., Philip Kiefer, The West’s Water Shortage is Fueled by Human Error, OUTSIDE (Nov.

11, 2019), https://perma.cc/TPA3-7WZ5.

2021] A RIVER USED TO RUN THROUGH IT 69