Arizona court rules in favour of water resources department

Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s water resources department  need not consider unquantified federal reserved water rights while determining whether a developer has sufficient water supply under state law.

The Supreme Court gave this ruling for the case, Silver v. Pueblo Del Sol Water Company, which involved the Arizona Department of Water Resources’s (ADWR) approval of an application filed by Pueblo Del Sol Water Company to supply water to a proposed 7,000 unit development in Cochise County.

The county is located around five miles from the San Pedro River.

As per the state law, developers need to get an adequate water supply designation from the water department in certain situtation.

The approval by ADWR in 2013 prompted a lawsuit by the US Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, and environmentalists Robin Silver and Patricia Gerrodette.

The lawsuit was filed based on the 1988 designation of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA) passed by Congress that reserved water rights to fulfill the unspecified purposes of SPRNCA.

As per the ruling of Maricopa County Superior Court, the ADWR should have considered the federal government’s reserved water rights. This ruling was overturned by an appeals court in 2016 and then both parties appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court.

According to the 9 August 2018 decision, the Arizona Supreme Court vacated the Superior Court’s decision and affirmed ADWR’s approval of Pueblo Del Sol Water Company’s application.

The court ruled that as per the current state law, the ADWR need not consider unquantified federal reserved water rights in its analysis.

The Water Water Systems Council (WSC) filed an amicus brief supporting the the ADWR’s stance that this requirement would need speculative analyses, which does not fall under ADWR’s scope of duties.

WSC executive director Margaret Martens said: “This decision reinforces the principle that federal reserved water rights must be quantified prior to impacting state water rights.

“Given the huge number of unquantified federal reserved water rights, this principle provides important protection to private water wells and supports the notion that the right to a private water well is an important property right.”

The Water Systems Council is a nonprofit organization with focus on household wells and small water well systems.