Legal experts and property owners are still digesting the ramifications of a Texas Supreme Court ruling that landowners own the water beneath their land. As Mose Buchele of KUT News reports for StateImpact Texas, the consequences for landowners and conservationists remain murky. Read the full story at StateImpact Texas.
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Comments (3)
JC DemocratofTejas
I applaud this ruling, and I am somewhat shocked at the judiciary. Could there be hope?
Could U.S. District Court Judge Richard Cebull be removed from office? Could the Supremes concur that corporations are not people and rescind Citizens United?
Billy Howe
I respect Andrew Sansom, but Texas is not the only state that treats surface and groundwater differently. And, it would be unconstitutional for the Texas Legislature to try and redefine the property right in groundwater now that the Texas Supreme Court has ruled. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled under the US Constitution that “a State cannot be permitted to defeat the constitutional prohibition against taking property without due process of law by the simple device of asserting retroactively that the property it has taken never existed at all.” Hughes v. Washington, 389 U.S. 290, 296-97 (1967) (Stewart, J., concurring).
With respect to Mr. Mason, no regulation of private property rights has ever caused a flood of litigation. These cases are extremely hard for a landowner to win,and if you sue a groundwater district and lose, the Water Code requires the landowner to pay the district's costs. There will be no flood. Just as there was no flood of lawsuits against the Railroad Commission for restricting oil and gas production.
Mark McPherson
I agree with Billy Howe's statements.
I hope this ruling causes districts to reconsider how they go about conserving Texas groundwater. SAWS has shown that educating people and businesses in an area as to how to conserve water can be very effective. Their statistics are amazing. Perhaps districts can stop focusing on artificially restricting supply and instead work to reduce demand, as SAWS has done. If we don't need to take water out of the aquifer, the effect will be to leave more water in those resources.
The state water plan includes, as one of its goals, that we use no more than 140 gallons of water per day, per person, in our households. Maybe districts can now begin adopting rules that encourage us to reach that goal. Let's start focusing on managing the water we bring to the surface once it gets here in the most efficient way possible.
Mark McPherson
McPherson LawFirm, PC
Dallas, TX
@enviropinions