by Raul Riesgo in Sacramento Bee

November 29, 2017

In a recent Viewpoints article (“A new approach to protecting rivers,” Nov. 20), three academics propose accomplishing the greater good by very bad means that are also clearly unconstitutional.

They would strip California’s water rights from private property owners without compensation and grant those rights to the environment and ecosystems, free of charge. Cities, farms, hydropower, fisheries, industry and other uses be damned, they seem to imply.

California’s infamous “Whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting” collection of water laws has no greater bedrock than this: Citizens and others who own early claims to water rights have a state guarantee to the first use of water flowing to them in rivers, streams, lakes, underground aquifers and other bodies of water.

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