Posted March 17, 2014
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Water Rights Protection Act on a mostly party-line vote of 238-174, according to an Agri-Pulse article available here.
The bill, H.R. 3189, sponsored by Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO), would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture from “requiring the transfer of privately held water rights to the federal government as a condition of a special use permit, lease or other land use arrangement.”
“Over the past decade there have been numerous cases when the federal government has attempted to circumvent long-established state water law in order to take privately-held water rights without paying for them,” Tipton said.
“With 40 percent of the western cow herd spending some time on public lands, the ability to have secure water rights is imperative, not only to producers but to the economy,” said National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President Bob McCan.
House Democrats argued that the bill would “strip federal land management agencies of their ability to condition water use in their permitting processes, essentially prohibiting them from enforcing protections of rivers and other water resources for fish, wildlife and recreation.”
The bill is a response to a 2011 U.S. Forest Service proposal to require ski resorts on public land to transfer their water rights to the federal government, according to an article by The Hill available here.
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) said the U.S. Forest Service was “trying to ensure that companies operating on public land don’t sell off water rights associated with the land they’re using.”
For more information on water law, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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