In California, surface water provides approximately 60 percent of the state’s agricultural, industrial, and municipal water demand. Surface water is also vital for the environment—it supports instream habitats for aquatic species and helps maintain adequate water quality levels in the state’s streams, rivers, and lakes. This surface water, however, is overallocated. The amount of allowed water withdrawals exceeds the surface water that is available without extensive damage to ecosystems and other instream uses. Climate change will only further impact the timing and quantity of available surface water. In a future where less water will be available to meet the same or increased demand, moving water between users and protecting water for non-consumptive uses will become increasingly important. Market-based strategies, such as water markets, are proposed as an effective and efficient way to move water from low-value to high-value uses and will likely play an important role in the management of California’s scarce surface water resources.

The state with the largest population, agricultural sector, and economy in the nation has a problem: it has been withdrawing groundwater at an unsustainable rate that could cause dozens of the state’s aquifers to go dry, which would have devastating impacts on the population, agricultural sector, and economy. To try to counter that, the California Legislature passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (“SGMA”) in 2014, during the hottest drought in the state’s recorded history, to try to protect the source of one-third of its water during standard years and one-half of its water during drought years.

California was one of the first states to codify the principle of environmental justice ("EJ"), which state law defines as "the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies." Historically, activism in the EJ field has focused on the siting of hazardous facilities such as landfills in poor communities of color, and on efforts to mitigate the associated pollution burden and health effects. However, procedural justice, which one researcher defines as the "fairness of the process by which goods are allocated and decisions made," is also an important component of EJ activism.

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was signed into law in September of 2014 with the goal of improving groundwater management in California by compelling local agencies overlying groundwater basins to create plans to manage their local groundwater supplies.

In 1878, John Wesley Powell, the first director of the United States Geological Survey, published his Report on the Lands in the Arid Regions of the United States. In his Arid Lands Report, Powell foresaw the essential role that water would play in the development of the American west and the challenges faced in managing watersheds that included not only mainstem rivers but networks of tributaries that contributed water to mainstem rivers.

I am deeply honored to participate in this Symposium, the first held at Pacific/McGeorge. The phrase "The New Normal" is a truly appropate way of looking at where we are now in California Water.

Use it or lose it — that is the California way. Or is it? Many practicing California water law attorneys long assumed that forfeiture of a pre-1914 appropriative right could automatically occurred after five years of nonuse. However, a recent state appellate opinion puts this assumption in jeopardy.

In the context of California's history-making drought — the worst in 1,200 years — experts at the 2015 California Water Law Symposium debated reasonable, beneficial, and wasteful uses of the state's dwindling and precious water resources. Celebrating its eleventh year, this symposium, entitled "Wasted Water: Reasonable Use Law in 21st Century California," was hosted by Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco on January 24 and saw participation from half a dozen law schools and experts from law firms, nonprofit organizations, government, and businesses across California.

The 2015 California Water Law Symposium examined the topic of reasonable use in the 21st century. In this spirit, organizers from U.C. Hastings crafted a panel regarding the scope of the "reasonable use" doctrine and the limits of the State Water Resources Control Board's (State Water Board) power to regulate water users.

Nearly two-thirds of the California population and seven million acres of agricultural land receive water from the State Water Project ("SWP") operated by the California Department of Water Resources ("DWR") or the Central Valley Project ("CVP") operated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) (SWP and CVP collectively referred to as "Projects"). In the Consolidated Delta Smelt Cases, two district court opinions for the Eastern District of California review a Biological Opinion ("BiOp") issued in 2008 by the Fish and Wildlife Service ("FWS") that placed restrictions on the Projects' operations to protect endangered species.

Nearly two-thirds of the California population and seven million acres of agricultural land receive water from the State Water Project ("SWP") operated by the California Department of Water Resources ("DWR") or the Central Valley Project ("CVP") operated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation ("Bureau") (SWP and CVP, collectively referred to as "Projects"). In the Consolidated Salmonid Cases, the Eastern District Court of California reviewed a Biological Opinion ("BiOp") issued in 2009 by the National Marine Fisheries Service ("NMFS") that placed restrictions on the Projects' operations to protect endangered species.

On August 29, 2014, the California Legislature approved a package of bills aimed at managing groundwater extraction. For 100 years, the Legislature had declined to regulate groundwater extraction, and courts have refused to expand local or state agency control over the practice.

In the midst of California’s most severe drought in thirty years, legislators took an historic step towards remedying its long-term negative impacts on the state’s groundwater supply. On Friday, August 29th, the California Senate and Assembly passed a package of bills (SB 1168, SB 1319, and AB 1739) which aims to regulate the extraction of groundwater and establish a sustainable program of groundwater management over the next 50 years.

In Environmental Law Foundation et al. v. State Water Resources Control Board, 34-2010-800000583, the Superior Court of Sacramento issued a narrow ruling that the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater hydrologically connected to navigable waters.

In California Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co., the United States Supreme Court addressed whether federal land patents issued to western settlers pursuant to federal land disposition laws such as the Homestead Act also conveyed federal common law riparian rights to water. The Court held that federal land patents did not include riparian water rights as a matter of federal law. Instead, the Court held that by the 1877 Desert Land Act, Congress had severed water resources from the federal public domain lands; as a result, the states were and are free to develop and enforce their own laws addressing water allocation.

In California water law these days, there is increasing talk about the reasonable use provisions of the California Constitution and the California Water Code. These provisions provide that all water uses and methods of water diversion in California must be reasonable and cannot be wasteful.

As follow-up to the Symposium, The California Water Law Journal would like to offer attendees the opportunity to publish articles about the panels.