philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

What Data-Driven Science Reveals About the Twisted Saga of Western Water Rights

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At Caltech, Laura Taylor, a postdoctoral instructor in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, conducts data-driven research that combines satellite imagery with historical and economic analysis to point to policy solutions for fairer resource allocation and cleaner water.

Through her work, Taylor has demonstrated that the processes tribes must go through to have their long-established legal rights to water quantified and enforced may actually be contributing to the degradation of this resource. ...

Under the “first in time, first in right” doctrine, a principle of prior appropriation used in Western United States water law, the first person to divert water from a natural source and put it to “beneficial use” secures the legal right to that water. ...

The 1908 US Supreme Court decision in Winters v. United States created a unique category of water rights for Native American tribes that takes precedence over later nontribal appropriations under the “first in time, first in right” principle. Winters recognized that tribal water rights were implicitly reserved by treaties, even if these rights were not explicitly mentioned in the agreements. ...

... Taylor explains. “Out here, not using water is seen as wasting it. That mentality has shaped decades of policy—and it’s a huge part of why water is so scarce today.” ...

Levels of dissolved oxygen—an essential indicator of water health—drop significantly near reservations as legal battles drag on. Pollution worsens upstream of Native American reservations, specifically, where industrial or agricultural runoff can have devastating effects on downstream water users. ...

“The federal government has taken a soft approach to these negotiations,” she says. “But we now have empirical evidence that this delay is actually harming the environment.” ...

See the full story here: https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/western-water-rights-reservations?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=magazine-fall24&utm_source=weekly-newsletter&utm_content=&utm_term=