Rummuser has just written about battles over water. That’s been a big issue in the history of the Southwest. Right now Texas is suing New Mexico and Colorado for using too much water from the Rio Grande, and a big lawsuit down in the valley has just been settled after 51 years.
Years ago we were originally included in a lawsuit by the federal government and three Indian tribes for trespassing on their water rights. This was even though we had a permit from the state to use our well.
After the first bit of panic — the feds have much deeper pockets than we do — we realized they were assuming we were in the Jemez River watershed, and we could show using maps that any water on our land wouldn’t flow into that drainage basin. Apparently they had included anyone in the general area who had been granted water rights by the state.
Anyway, we contacted a water rights lawyer who said ordinarily he didn’t talk to individuals, just to groups of at least 100 people because we wouldn’t be able to afford him for the prolonged fight that these suits take. But he agreed our name shouldn’t have been on the lawsuit, and while we were there he phoned a lawyer representing the government telling him we had been “misjoined” and that we wouldn’t counter sue if they took our name off the list. The bit about counter suing made me nervous, but it worked. We paid the lawyer a few hundred dollars and that was the end of it for us. Was that ever worth it! Apparently the case hasn’t completely been settled yet.
Thanks, Rummuser, for reminding us of that experience. It was a real eye opener.
what a scary complicated mess. and how quickly we can unwittingly become part of something so big and not even really connected!
did you read Shackman’s info about the Nestle Corporation? that’s a scary proposition to me. when water becomes part of the Corporate world to the extent they’re trying for… oh my.
We really dodged a bullet on that one. I hadn’t read about Nestle before, here’s a great article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/backlash-bottled-water-nestle/
Phew! I can well appreciate your concern about court expenses having myself experienced a prolonged fight against one of our states during the infamous emergency years. It was really a miracle that your got out of it at such low expense.
Yes. We were thrilled. Thank you for your post that reminded us of it — it was interesting to see that it is still going on after all these years.
I don’t really know why, but I’ve been aware of how contentious water right issues can be for a long time. It’s good that you were able to escape from it. 😉
We were very lucky. 🙂
We never think about water issues here in Canada, assuming that the flow of water will be free and easy forever. But all we have to do is look South and at other parts of the world to realize that is is a very large issue for many. So we shouldn’t take it for granted. I’m always aware that the world’s resources are being overused as the world’s population increases. And that affects everybody!
The ever increasing population is the biggest culprit, but that’s not likely to change without some great catastrophes. 🙁
that’s an eyeopener for sure – here, I believe there are debate/problems with water, mainly I think to do with the bottled water industry. But it’s not something I’ve thought about – (haven’t caught up with all my blogs yet…)
I’m glad it hasn’t been a problem for you!
It’s often tempting to take legal action over some intractable dispute or a faulty product or whatever, but it can easily become a long-winded and expensive business, so I always look for other ways of solving the problem. I’m glad the threat of counter-suing paid off on this occasion and you weren’t plunged into a ruinous stand-off.
Unfortunately with water rights there is no easy way to solve the problem, except if one has been misjoined. All one can do is join with enough other people and pay the lawyers one’s share.