Comments on: T. Boone Pickens vs. Texas Water Conservation Board

By: water damage

water damage — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:32:33 +0000

From the Great Lakes to Puget Sound, from the Mississippi River to the Everglades, and from Chesapeake Bay to the Colorado – we can only protect the great waters of America if we safeguard the countless streams that feed them and the millions of acres of wetlands that help keep them clean. Perhaps that is why the Senate EPW committee rejected the spurious arguments of powerful polluters and instead voted to restore protections vital to America’s great waters. As its name indicates, the Clean Water Restoration Act does no more than restore the original scope of the Clean Water Act that our nation adopted some 37 years ago – to protect all the waters of the United States.

By: Samantha Tress

Samantha Tress — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:20:15 +0000

According to http://texaswater.tamu.edu/waterlaw.texas.htm, which is a website of Texas A&M University, “Texas courts have refused to adopt the American rule of “reasonable use” with respect to groundwater.” C Emerson- do you know if that has been updated? It would be really interesting to see how they define “reasonable.”

By: C Emerson

C Emerson — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:51:04 +0000

Your evaluation of Texas water law is a bit misleading…in Texas, underground water is privately owned as you say; however, it is not “absolute.” Private ownership and use is subject to the beneficial use doctrine, which acts as a limitation on the owner’s ability to use it indiscriminately.