California Water Rights and Flexibility

I’m intrigued that both defenses of our current water rights system emphasize how flexible our water rights system is.
Public Water Coalition:
“The hallmark of California water rights is flexibility.” …
“With a resource as variable as water, some flexibility in rights is by design. Appropriative water rights account for this flexibility because their holders can modify [...]

California’s Current Water Rights and Investment

“Communities throughout California have invested billions of dollars in reliance on their water rights or water-supply contracts issued under others’ water rights.”
Both defenses of California’s current water rights system point to the investment that water agencies have made based on their water rights. I’m interpreting that to mean that they’ve put billions of dollars into [...]

Brief description of California’s current water rights system.

A summary of California’s water rights system. The two major kinds of rights are riparian and appropriative. Riparian rights are for people who own property adjacent to a river; they can use river water to irrigate adjoining property. If the river is low, all riparian users are supposed to cut their water use proportionally. Appropriative [...]

Two defenses of our current water rights system

I am genuinely grateful to the Public Water Coalition for writing up a defense of our current water rights system (II(f) pgs 12-13). I’ll be looking at both that section and to three paragraphs from Ms. Moon’s testimony to the Little Hoover Commission, which also defended the current water rights system (page 3). [...]

Good things in the Public Water Coalition position paper.

I should say some things I liked about the Public Water Coalition paper, most of which can be found in their introduction and core principles. (Sadly, when they develop the themes in later sections, they walk them back somewhat, or apply them to the Delta but not themselves.)
Still, they show a real solid grasp [...]

The Public Water Coalition position paper and money.

You guys are all savvy and interested and no doubt some of you know more about the field of water than I do. I’m going to have to trust you, because showing how every recommendation in this paper reinforces the water agencies who are already powerful takes some background. Worse, it is repetitive [...]

Big versus little.

Here it is again, more evidence of the new big v. little alignment in water politics.  From the State Water Contractors (very big), in testimony about water governance (pg 4):
Therefore, SWC makes the following recommendations regarding the role and activity of the SWRCB in its oversight of water rights:
1. To protect other beneficial users of [...]

II. e. Real Time Operations/Monitoring/Reporting

This is not a major point of the Public Water Coalition’s position paper, but it illustrates my take on the whole piece.  One of their eight recommendations to improve water supply and reliability (Section II, starting page 4) is to start real time operations monitoring and reporting (II, e.  page 11).  In paraphrase, they propose [...]

I got mine.

I’ve now read the Public Water Coalition’s position paper a few more times.  It is an odd document.  Seriously, I don’t know anything about how the Public Water Coalition wants to organize or exert influence, although with the membership they claim, they could be very powerful.  All I can find online is a few Boards [...]

Introduction: the Public Water Coalition

I was very intrigued by this story on a new coalition in water politics, the Public Water Coalition.  It is a few months old, and like the article says, I had never heard of it.  It looks to be a loose affiliation of most of the big water districts in the state.  They don’t have staff [...]