water rights
Legal flow claims
Water rights are legal entitlements to use water from a particular source—a river, lake, aquifer, or stream.
These rights determine who can draw water, how much, and for what purposes.
In the American West, where water is scarce, water rights are valuable property that can be bought and sold: The ranch came with senior water rights to the creek.
Systems vary: riparian rights attach to land bordering water, while prior appropriation follows "first in time, first in right."
- irrigationArtificial water supply for agriculture
- watershedDrainage area boundary
- adjudicationFormal decision on disputes
- rainwater harvestingGathering precipitation for later use
- climate change adaptationAdjusting to altered conditions
floodplain · reservoir · aquifer · easement · rancher · pollution control · diversion · well · dispute · downstream · treaty · drought · canal · pueblo · allocation · irrigation systems · snowmelt · entitlement
- Tribal Rightstribal governance, tribal sovereignty, tribal membership, tribal courts, tribal police
- water lawforfeiture, abandonment, adjudication
- water rights
- ownership disputesland disputes, land dispute, boundary disputes, boundary dispute, property claim
- property rightsownership, private property, real property, title, deed
- Tribal Environmenttribal lands, reservation lands, ancestral lands, sacred lands, ceded lands
water rightsland rights
Legal claims to territory
mineral rights · air rights · grazing rights · fishing rights
water, watery, watered, rights, watering, righteous, waters, rightly, rightful