Talk:Water right

Comments
I don't see why this should be merged with Water law. Water rights is certainly an area of water law, but is a big enough area to warrent its own article. The current water law article covers only water quality regulations, however, so its scope should be widened a good bit. Maybe merge the content of Water law into Water quality, and put real content into Water law. Toiyabe 00:18, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While neither page has been sufficiently fleshed out at this stage, I too think they are better separated. Daniel Collins 01:18, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I think they should be kept separate too. Water law is already a rather large page and if it is developed, it could be made into a huge page because it's such a big and complex subject.  Water rights describe something much more specific.  I agree with both of you though that both of these pages are in need of a significant amount of work.  Cazort (talk) 15:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I work for a water rights management company, and I have to disagree with Cazort. I am not a lawyer, but do occasionally work with water attorneys. My role with water is marketing the water rights, facilitating trades, developing appraisals/valuations, etc. It is much more of an asset management career than that of a lawyer. If anything, this section needs to discuss the role of water rights markets (and even tie into other ecosystem markets). TheWaterWonk (talk) 17:00, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I would keep the two articles separate but make them more interconnected than they currently are. While water rights are governed by water law, they may also be governed by contracts, treaties, or other mechanisms outside water law. Geodanny (talk) 07:36, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

"On streams and rivers these are referred to as riparian rights, or littoral rights, which are protected by property law." This should be cited in some capacity because it is not commonly known that riparian rights are protected by property law, so there should be some source reference included for this statement. SCulley25 (talk) 20:17, 22 April 2022 (UTC)SCulley25

"Every water right is parameterized by an annual yield and an appropriation date. When a water right is sold, it maintains its original appropriation date." This statement is not commonly known and therefore should include a citation. SCulley25 (talk) 20:21, 22 April 2022 (UTC)SCulley25

This article attempts to address the history of water rights laws, yet narrowly covers only the histories in the United States, Finland and ancient Rome. There should be more extensive information regarding the history of water rights policy on a global scale. SCulley25 (talk) 20:26, 22 April 2022 (UTC)SCulley25

Colorado river
I've been working on pages related to the Colorado river, including the Colorado River Delta, Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, etc. I think it would be really interesting/useful to try to connect/relate this material to this page and the page on water law...because there are some really "hot" issues relating to the colorado river and water rights. I might start when I got a moment but I thought I'd throw it out there in case anyone else wanted to get on it first! Cazort (talk) 15:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

water solidarity
This article needs a section on water solidarity, which is becoming an important principle in the EU and in fact needs its own article. --Espoo (talk) 07:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

What the heck is water solidarity? Wikipedia has no page with that title, nor am I able to find any clear definition of this term on the web. I have deleted this section; do not restore it without adding a definition of the term. 173.228.119.252 (talk) 14:45, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Types of Water Rights
I updated the section regarding types of water rights. I think there are two basic classes of water rights: land-based and use-based. I moved the third class regarding water bodies in Finland because it sounds land-based. It relates to who owns the lake (i.e. land the water sits on). A third potential class of water rights are contract-based. For example, in the United States, states where the Colorado River flows signed a compact (i.e. contract) that allocated its waters. Other states have similar agreements. The United States and Canada also have a broad-ranging compact regarding the Great Lakes. This class may also include water solidarity, which sounds a lot like an agreement/contract regarding the amount of water entitlements. And a fourth potential class of water rights are adjudicative rights, which come directly from allocations assigned by courts. These third and fourth classes require a bit more research and consideration before I would add them to the article. Geodanny (talk) 07:36, 23 September 2012 (UTC)