U.S. Water News Online
SANTA FE -- The Supreme Court has overturned a claim by the city of Las Vegas, N.M., that it possesses special water rights allowing it to take as much water as it needs for future growth.
The high court's decision sends the case back to the lower courts for the city to work out a settlement with other area water users on an equitable division of available water.
The state engineer's office applauded the decision, saying the court did the right thing. City officials declined to immediately comment pending a closer review of the court's 34-page decision.
The ruling overturns a 1958 high court decision adopting the so-called pueblo rights doctrine, which says that communities founded in Spanish colonial or Mexican times were deemed to possess special rights giving them access to as much water from a river as necessary for municipal uses.
The doctrine also allowed expansion of a town's right to accommodate future population increases.
In a long-standing battle between Las Vegas-area acequia organizations and the city over surface water use, then-State Engineer Eluid Martinez had sought a declaration of the city's water rights. Many of the associations claimed water rights senior to those of the city. The city claimed the special rights under the pueblo rights doctrine.
``The Supreme Court, in our opinion, ruled exactly correct, considering the pueblo rights doctrine is invalid as a matter of New Mexico's system ... that governs water use,'' said D.L. Sanders, the office's chief attorney.
Justice Patricio Serna, who wrote the opinion, cited the appellate judges' 1994 decision that the court would, if given the opportunity, overrule prior cases establishing the pueblo rights doctrine. The high court had not reaffirmed the policy since 1958, and it had been ``uniformly criticized by scholars,'' Serna wrote.
As for its basis in historical fact, the court conceded that, at best, the doctrine rests on ``a very narrow foundation.'' However, justices were not convinced that the 1958 decision ``represents an entirely untenable view,'' Serna wrote.
Instead, the court based its rejection on the ``perpetually expanding nature'' of the pueblo right.
The court said New Mexico water law is based on respect for prior appropriations, as well as continuing beneficial use, promoting the economical use of water and conservation. The pueblo doctrine stands in contrast to those policies, allowing cities to take an increasing amount of water over an indefinite period of time, the court found.
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