California Bureaucrats Make Water Rights Grab

The California Water Resources Control Board  (WRCB) has notified more than 7,000 water rights owners that it may seize their water this year. This is the first time since 1988 that such notices were sent.

The WRCB mailed notices last week to every city and farm with state water rights in central and northern California including the watersheds of the Russian, Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Also included were state water rights holders on the Central Coast and Lassen County’s Tule Lake region.

WATER “RIGHT” IS A REVOCABLE “PERMISSION”

Indeed, the term water “rights” is misleading. In reality, it is not a right, but a permission to pump or divert water from a creek or stream.  The state last revoked water diversion rights/permissions in 1977.

State law has devised a complicated system of water permissions ranked according to seniority — when the right was granted to a parcel of land. Riparian rights are the most senior of all permissions and are based on historical claims to water running through or adjacant to the land. The most senior riparian rights date back to the times of Spanish colonial rule.

STATE WILL SEIZE LEAST SENIOR RIGHTS FIRST

State law provides that the state can seize water beginning with the least senior rights/permissions then move up the chain.