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DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT: THE EVOLUTION OF A FEDERAL RESERVED WATER RIGHT 1
Author(s) -
Bassin N. Jay
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
jawra journal of the american water resources association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.957
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1752-1688
pISSN - 1093-474X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1985.tb05360.x
Subject(s) - water right , national park , watershed , government (linguistics) , service (business) , upstream (networking) , settlement (finance) , federal law , business , public administration , environmental resource management , hydrology (agriculture) , law , environmental science , political science , environmental planning , geography , water resources , ecology , archaeology , geology , engineering , finance , computer science , legislation , philosophy , linguistics , biology , telecommunications , marketing , machine learning , payment , geotechnical engineering
Dinosaur National Monument, in northwestern Colorado, has become a test case in the establishment of a federal reserved water right to instream flows. For the first time, the Interior Department was forced to rigorously defend its claims in a watershed where the federal government did not control the upstream reaches. Inadequate quantification of minimum flow requirements, court orders, and an apparent Congressional ban on the spending of Water Resources Program funds by the Park Service to quantify its water rights have already placed the Service in a difficult position to protect instream flows for maintaining the ecological integrity of the Monument. As late as 1983, administrators of the Park Service were divided over their legal strategy, many wanting to pursue a policy of claiming “natural, historic” flows rather than “minimum” flows. The conditional right to instream flows panted to the Park Service in 1978 was subject to quantification within five years. That deadline has been extended, but it is not likely that the case will reach final settlement this decade. Until the design and conduct of federal water rights quantifications better integrate public policy and law with science, the principle lesson from Dinosaur may have to be repeated.