Short Course on Water Law for the Eastern United States

Until the past generation, problems in water law have been regarded as exclusively the concern of jurisdictions possessing either arid or saturated lands. The increasing industrialization and urban concentration occurring since 1900 have radically altered this attitude. Nowhere is this more strikingly shown than in the United States. In this country water use rose from 40 billion gallons per day in 1900 to 92 billion in 1930, and 312 billion in 1960. For the entire period, the total readily available fresh water supply has been 515 billion gallons per day. By 1975 it is predicted the United States will be drawing 453 billion of this each day and, in order to safeguard such demands, will require a quantity of water one third more than the total supply. This physical miracle is to be performed through techniques for the conversion of saline and brackish waters, which pose engineering and economic difficulties requiring Herculean solutions. Because these changes are to occur in the eastern United States, which presently has 55 per cent of the nation\u27s population and 65 per cent of its industry; and because this is the area previously regarded as unaffected by water problems, an examination of the pertinent law is in order in this interval between the realization of impending doom and the coming of the anticipated technical salvation

Has Nature Any Right to Life

As an introduction to the Symposium, the author presents the evolution of man\u27s relationship to the environment within which he lives. Now the dominating factor, man controls not only the future of the environment, but also his own capacity to survive

The Necessity to Change Man\u27s Traditional View of Nature

New preconceptions for the common man of this and future generations must be formed so that reality can be responded to in a way that does not bring human culture to a terminus. The common man—peasant, fisherman, industrialist, banker, politician, to name a few of the occupations meant by that term—must not come to see nature as a mine and his future salvation as a rocket ride to Mars, where all the old worldly mistakes can be repeated. What finally must be accepted, instead, is the vision of man as the giver to nature, the warden of himself and his environment, the planner who encompasses his present and provides for the future relation of human demands and the natural resources which must meet them. It is another conception by which reality can be seen; and if it is accepted, such a conception will make more possible the sort of continued existence man professes to want. If it is not, so that man continues to perceive everything around him as a garden captured from the wilderness, or, worse, comes to see his possessions as mined treasures, then the future can only be a reenactment of the loss of Eden. But this time there will be no expulsion, just a self-ordained departure. And the destination will not be wilderness, but man-made desert instead. There is nothing predetermined about it; but if the human vision does not change, the balances of nature throughout most of the world will keep on shifting toward the sere

The Recurring State Judicial Task of Choosing Rules for Groundwater Law: How Occult Still?

I. Judicial Choices Relative to Knowledge Concerning Groundwater II. The Mid-Nineteenth Century Choices and the Knowledge Underlying Them III. Twentieth-Century Judicial Choices Modifying and Changing the Dominant Mid-Nineteenth Century Preferred Choice IV. Groundwater Problems in the Late Twentieth Century as Both a Free and a Scarce Goo