After reading my last post, some of our knowledgeable citizens have reminded me that Tuolumne River Trust, Friends of the River and Restore the Delta have no true water rights to the Tuolumne River.* I’m aware of that. What they do have is the right to lobby for fair and just usage of water from all our rivers. To their credit, they sometimes succeed.
It’s easy to forget that surface water belongs to the public. Public trust doctrine goes back at least to the days of the Roman Empire and probably even further. It’s a simple concept: Anyone who tried to privatize water usage on a broad scale would face insurmountable difficulties from overwhelming opposition, for obvious reasons. It would be like trying to privatize air.
We’re all stakeholders in water use. At least since the 19th century, when Charles Lux and Henry Miller began appropriating San Joaquin Valley river water for their own uses, water rights and usage have been highly politicized, often to the detriment of the public…