1. This week I covered chapters 5 and 6, pages 107-151.
2. Some of the main topics I have read about are that there are two approaches to water rights, first is riparian the second is prior appropriation. Or a combination of these can be used. Also, I learned that The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers have a huge say in how water is managed, along with other government entities, representatives, and employees.
3. Some significant things I learned and new terminology presented are that ownership of the Republican River that runs through Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas is not necessarily determined by who owns the river bottom. Ownership of the water is divided based not on how many miles of river are in each state, but on a contract signed in 1943. At this time the state of Colorado sold the right to most of the annual flows of water through the river as follows: 49 percent went to Nebraska, 40 Percent went to Kansas, and Colorado only kept 1 percent. This means that if Colorado uses more than its allotted 11 percent they could face fines and lawsuits. No matter how much Colorado's population grows or how dry the land becomes, they are only allowed there 11 percent.
- riparian: all landowners whose property is adjoining to a body of water have the right to make reasonable use of it
- prior appropriation: first in time, first in right. In other words the first to use it is the person to have rights over it.
4. This affects our society because as consumers we use water from local places that we can find it. We use it for recreational use and also for consumption uses. Not many of us use water straight from a stream anymore but just knowing that if you needed that water you might not have the right to use it, even if it is on your land.We should care about this because there is going to come a time when water is going to become much more expensive the scarcer it gets and we need to know what water we will have rights to if it comes down to it. The only thing that we can completely agree on in this country is that we have a big water problem and we need to find a solution. We need to start creating national water policies or advisory boards with regional and local approaches to solve all the water issues.
