[VIDEO] The Price of an Aging Infrastructure on the Environment
The Water Values Podcast - How Can We Resolve Water Conflicts?
Texas produces more than just oil and gas. Every day, millions of gallons of produced water are generated as a byproduct of oil and gas production. Once viewed strictly as a waste product, produced water is now at the center...more
A wave of water-related legislation swept through the Oregon Legislature during the 2025 session. The most controversial water-related bills did not end up passing. In particular, there were three bills that would have...more
The Court of Appeal confirmed that the rights to floodwater captured and stored in an aquifer beneath property were not personal property but rather appurtenant to the land and were transferred with the property during a...more
Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing to lay the groundwork for building a $20-billion water tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta before his term expires, and state water regulators are considering whether to grant a...more
On March 14, 2025, the Court of Appeal for California’s Fifth Appellate District issued its decision in Sandton Agriculture Investments III v. 4-S Ranch Partners, 2025 S.O.S. 659. That case provided guidance on ownership of...more
Who owns produced water in Texas? And what is produced water anyway – oil and gas waste and part of the mineral estate, or groundwater and part of the surface estate? We may be closer to an answer to these questions now...more
President Donald Trump on Monday issued a memorandum directing the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of the Interior to develop a new plan within 90 days “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to...more
The time for Newsom to sign or veto bills has now passed. Of the nine bills discussed herein, Newsom signed seven and vetoed two. Please see the update below each bill that discusses its resolution....more
Farmers in southern Tulare County will face greater scrutiny for groundwater pumping after the state placed the region on probation following a lengthy hearing in Sacramento on Tuesday....more
A judge has temporarily blocked a plan by a California state water board to take over monitoring groundwater use in a portion of the crop-rich San Joaquin Valley, according to a copy of the decision obtained on July 16. Kings...more
What Happened? On June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court narrowly held that three states could not enter a consent decree to settle their interstate water dispute without the support of the intervening federal government. The...more
Republican attorneys general from 20 U.S. states sued the Biden administration on Tuesday, seeking to block new reforms to the U.S. environmental review process for major projects such as transmission lines and wind and solar...more
Update: The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) officially kicked off the Nooksack adjudication, a legal process that will determine the priority of water rights in Whatcom County and portions of Skagit County....more
The Alberta government has identified, and is taking proactive steps to address, the looming threat of a severe drought this year. As negotiations unfold to secure water-sharing agreements, a cascade of legal and economic...more
The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) announced it will begin an adjudication of water rights in Water Resources Inventory Area 1 (WRIA1), including the Nooksack River system, in April 2024. An adjudication is the...more
An ongoing, historic drought in California has compelled California state legislators to rethink the state’s long-standing treatment of water rights. While the recent heavy snowpack and wet spring and summer have alleviated...more
The California 2023 Legislative Session ended on September 14, 2023, and presented the Governor with several important changes to California’s water-related statutes. The Governor had until October 14, 2023, to sign all...more
California legislators have passed a bill articulating the scope of the State Water Resources Control Board’s authority to investigate water rights. Senate Bill 389, which will go to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk for a final...more
Last week, leaders from a range of industries convened for two days in Los Angeles for Brownstein and WestWater’s inaugural Sustainable Water Investment Summit....more
After nearly a decade, the Texas Attorney General and the New Mexico Attorney General announced in October 2022 that Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado had reached an agreement over the distribution of water from the Rio Grande;...more
How water rights are granted and managed in the United States has always been a challenge. Unlike land grants, which are finite areas, water knows no boundaries and flows freely. How water is distributed, managed, and...more
According to the National Center for Environmental Information, about 51 percent of the continental United States has been experiencing drought conditions in the summer of 2022. More than 70 percent of the western U.S. faces...more
A California Court of Appeal held that the EIR for a public water authority’s river diversion and water storage project adequately described the unadjudicated waters to be diverted and adequately analyzed impacts to water...more
As severe drought conditions continue across the western U.S., Allen Matkins will begin publishing a quarterly newsletter focused on recent legal, regulatory, and policy issues impacting water users and suppliers in...more
On March 22, 2022, the Second District Court of Appeal published its Opinion in Buena Vista Water Storage District v. Kern Water Bank Authority, upholding the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Kern Water Bank...more