Marti Oakley (c)copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved

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A recent article about state governments seizing the rights to rain water off your roof, elicited a comment that almost sounded like it was relevant; until you examined the actual available data.  Because the of the convoluted logic used to make the arguments in this commentary, we felt it necessary to dispel misconceptions many people operate under when it comes to the issue of water rights.  This comment, crafted to look as though the government both state and federal is …..only trying to protect the rights of land owners….is a PR piece; gee….I wonder where this came from? 

C=Comment

A=Answer

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C.  First, in the western states, water rights are held for the beneficial use by the public and apportioned for use by seniority.

A. At one time this was true, but reinterpretation by the BLM of “public use”, “adequate use” and “beneficial use” have rendered seniority use as a part of property rights, null and void.  This means you have no water rights to speak of; apportioned use is not even a consideration.  Profit is all that matters and many states no longer recognize water rights as belonging to individual land regardless of what the previous statutes and laws were.

Because water is now declared by BLM to be a salable commodity, every effort is made to contract the allocated rights to water, to private corporations for use in strip mining, geo-thermal activities, and for sale to private corporations for diversions to far away places!

These private sellers have first rights to their allocation of water before any water is released to the “public”. On public lands either owned or controlled by the BLM, ALL waters existing above or below the surface belong to and are controlled by the BLM.  They could give a crap if you have water or you don’t.  More