Water Rights

Last week, Texas and Oklahoma squared off in a Supreme Court battle over water rights that has the drought-ridden West on edge. At issue is a state's control over its own water: Texas seeks to buy or otherwise tap water from Oklahoma under the terms of an interstate water compact, actions that Oklahoma has so far refused to permit despite the compact. The stakes of the court's decision are high. Interstate water agreements provide the legal foundation for the economies of most Western states, which are disproportionately dependent on irrigated agriculture.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - For decades this rural basin has battled over the Klamath River's most precious resource: water that sustains fish, irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast. Now, one of the nation's fiercest water wars is on the verge of erupting again. New water rights have given a group of Oregon Indian tribes an upper hand just as the region plunges into a severe drought . Farmers and wildlife refuges could be soon cut off by the Klamath Tribes, which in March were granted the Upper Klamath Basin's oldest water rights to the lake and tributaries that feed the mighty river flowing from arid southern Oregon to the foggy redwoods of the Northern California coast.

Re "Salton Sea Sticking Point in Water Deal," April 14: It seems hard to believe the simplest of answers has eluded all these water engineers. The Salton Sea is below sea level. The Pacific Ocean is at sea level. Set a 24-inch pipe on a gentle slope from one to the other and let nature (gravity) do the rest. Salinity is not a problem here. Dennis O'Sullivan Sherman Oaks

MAMMOTH - For a High Sierra stream whose name evokes mountain serenity, Pine Creek is nobody's idea of harmony with nature. On many mornings over the last decade, residents from the eastern Sierra enclave of 40 Acres cut a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power chain so they could open a gate and redirect the creek's water their way. On many afternoons, DWP workers closed the gate to send the water cascading into the Los Angeles Aqueduct system...

I protest the Metropolitan Water District's proposal to nearly double the annual parcel tax. I am vehemently opposed to this proposed assessment increase. More importantly, I oppose the MWD's high-handed management of the water resources of many Southern California counties. If the MWD thinks it's democratic or equitable to require 40% of the affected homeowners to protest a water bill increase, this only shows its criminal arrogance. Our district attorney should file a civil rights action in the interests of his constituents against the MWD, as has been done in San Diego County.

Re "The fluid state of liquid politics," Opinion, Aug. 23 With a glass of home-filtered water, I toast Bruce Babbitt and Douglas Wheeler for pushing CalFed water projects. Putting politics aside, more can be achieved to equitably distribute water for California's environment, farming and cities. The issue of drinking water also needs to be addressed. Consumers, hesitant to drink water delivered to homes because of impurities and chemical additives, rely on producers of bottled water and home water-filtering systems to satisfy a basic human need.

Re "It's an All-California Series, but Fans Are Worlds Apart," Oct. 15: Isn't this a great way to finally, once and for all, settle the Northern Californian-Southern Californian water dispute? When my sons traveled north to college (Chico State), they were surprised at all the animosity that exists "up north" toward us Southern Californians. They found out that this hostility comes from the Northern Californians' anger that we "steal" their water from them. In honor of the athletic prowess found in the sport of baseball, in my opinion this is a very appropriate and testosterone-laced way to settle an ages-long dispute over water: Do it via a gentlemen's duel.

MAMMOTH LAKES - The people of this small High Sierra ski town have survived drought, forest fires and earthquakes. They have endured economic recessions and volcano scares. But nothing in their history prepared them for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The DWP launched a legal attack six months ago for control of the city's primary source of water, Mammoth Creek, which tumbles down the slopes through town. The utility contends it has owned the water since 1905 and Mammoth Lakes has been poaching for decades.

"Battle Springs Up Over Water Rights" (July 4) suggests there's a problem where we believe none exists. There is no question that the water we purchase from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians is natural spring water. The federal government sets the requirements for this designation, and the California Department of Health Services (as reported in the article) has certified that the water we bottle from that source complies in all respects. The continued operation of our bottling plant and the hundreds of jobs it supports are not at risk.

Although officials say there is no immediate water crisis in Fillmore, the City Council has voted to spend as much as $10,000 on legal research of Fillmore's water rights. The council decided to hire Los Angeles lawyer Ralph B. Helm, a water rights specialist, to document the city's rights to surface and subterranean water in the Sespe Creek and the Santa Clara River. "There's no emergency," said City Atty. Joseph P. Kern. "This is something the city has thought about for a long time.

ALBUQUERQUE - The muddy Rio Grande isn't much to look at as it meanders through southern New Mexico to the Texas border, but its waters are a high-stakes prize in a new legal row unfolding between the neighboring states. This month, Texas asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its complaint that New Mexico has been diverting water it is obligated to send downstream under the 75-year-old Rio Grande Compact. By allowing its residents to sink nearby wells and pump water from the river, "New Mexico has changed the conditions that existed in 1938 when the compact was executed," the Texas complaint charges.

"A Dark Truth" is a would-be eco-thriller as forgettable as its generic title. Writer-director Damian Lee might have thought he had something to say about Third World water rights but this whole wan enterprise has little to impart except that - wait for it - greed is bad. And so is this unconvincing potboiler. Andy Garcia stars as Jack Begosian, an ex-CIA agent holed away in Toronto as a half-there family man and platitudinous radio talk show host. But when the co-heir (Deborah Kara Unger)

CALEXICO, Calif. - What's in a name? When it comes to the All-American Canal, apparently everything. Built in the 1930s, the 80-mile-long canal brings water from the Colorado River to the farmland of the Imperial Valley, transforming a rocky desert in California's southeast corner into one of the world's most bountiful agricultural regions. It replaced a canal in Mexico that once ferried water west and supplied farmers on both sides of the border. By building a new canal entirely in the U.S., Imperial Valley farmers and landowners, and the politicians who supported them, were asserting independence from their southern neighbor and, indirectly, claiming dominance over the river.

Los Angeles owes an old debt to the Owens Valley. It was there, a century ago, that representatives of this ambitious city quietly bought up water rights from unsuspecting farmers and then diverted the Owens River into a newly built aqueduct that brought Sierra snowmelt south and made Los Angeles possible. Owens Lake was emptied so that Los Angeles might prosper. But how far does that debt extend? Is Los Angeles forever on the hook for the actions of its forefathers? And to the extent that it is possible to restore some of the Owens Valley, what would make it whole?

Otto R. Skopil Jr., whose 40-year career as a federal judge included historic rulings on California water rights and the right of an Irvine teacher with AIDS to remain in the classroom, died Thursday at his home in Portland, Ore. He was 93. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on which he had served since 1979, announced his death but gave no cause. Skopil joined the federal bench in 1972, when President Nixon nominated him to the U.S. District Court in Oregon, and served as the chief U.S. judge in the state from 1976 to 1979, when President Carter appointed him to the appeals court.

Re "Is this water project worth the risk?," Editorial, Aug. 6 I agree that the Cadiz water project in the Mojave Desert requires more study. Because the wise use of water is imperative and our future depends on its conservation, let's look at the numbers. An acre-foot contains slightly more than 325,000 gallons, so the minimum draw from the desert aquifer of 50,000 acre-feet annually, as the company proposes, is more than 16 billion gallons of water. If that is "enough water every year to serve 100,000 homes," each residence will have the luxury of about 160,000 gallons, enough for many, many leaky toilets, dripping faucets and lush lawns.

Re "San Diego County Dam Nearly Done," July 27: Who owns the water that flows in streams or resides in deep aquifers? This country desperately needs a new unified national policy on water rights to replace the present confused system of riparian rights and prior appropriators' rights overlain by judicial decisions within the state and the conflict between states that arises from rights to water that flows through several states on its way to the ocean....

George C. Grover, legal expert on water rights who served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission, has died. He was 74. Grover, who also had been a Riverside County Superior Court judge, died Wednesday at his home in Riverside. As a lawyer, Grover successfully represented Los Angeles in one of its historic water rights cases, a suit against the city of San Fernando.

The search for reliable water supplies for Southern California has been going on for as long as Americans have lived here, and continues today. State officials are examining a proposal to draw water from the Sacramento River and ship it to this part of California, bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its shaky levees. Los Angeles officials are also trying to balance the water needs of the city against their obligations to hold down dust in the Owens Valley, which has long supplied much of Los Angeles' water and whose brackish lake dried up in the process.