Population growth in urban areas in Western drought-stricken states has caused dire stress on water supplies. This presentation will begin by discussing the interaction of population growth in such cities with climate change, diminishing snowpack, and drought, and their combined impact on surface and groundwater supplies. The speakers will then examine legal and other responses of state and local governments, encompassing the construction of new storage facilities and changes in land use planning, including restrictions on new residential construction. The speakers will also discuss whether the prior appropriation doctrine is sufficiently flexible to allow for adaptive management, the transfer and banking of perfected and inchoate water rights, and the reallocation of water from agricultural to municipal and industrial uses, and tools used by state and local governments, such as the great and growing cities doctrine and amendments to state water statutes, to address growing populations in water-starved cities.
Video presentation from the 70th Annual Natural Resources and Energy Law Institute.
1 CLE Credit – Approval ID:
CO ID - 849637
This course has been accredited for CLE credit in Colorado. CLE credit hours shown are for Colorado only. A CLE course number for Colorado will be provided to attendees on their certificates of attendance once a course has been completed. New Mexico attorneys who complete a course must notify us (cle@rmmlf.org) because we are required to report credits for you. If this course has been approved for RPL/CPL credit with the American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL), the credits will be listed below in a separate section for AAPL. If applicable, Component Codes for AAPL recertification will also be provided. Please contact RMMLF if you need independent verification by the provider of your attendance or participation for CLE purposes. Except as provided above, RMMLF generally does not apply for accreditation from any other MCLE/CPD organizations for its online legal education program. Upon completion of a program a certificate of attendance will be issued to all attendees. Except as provided above, attendees must verify with their respective state bars and CPD organizations and their specific rules as to whether or not the certificate of attendance will be recognized by that body for MCLE/CPD purposes, and the number of CLE/CPD credits that may be available. The live presentation of the on-demand program has been accredited in most mandatory states as part of a larger course, but such accreditation does not assure recognition of the on-demand program.
ADAM W. GRAVLEY is a Partner at Van Ness Feldman in Seattle, Washington. He has over three decades of experience representing both public and private clients in environmental law with a particular focus on resolving water issues in regulatory, litigation, transactional, and public policy settings. His comprehensive water practice includes water rights permitting, transfers, and appeals; general stream adjudications; settlement, mediation, and collaborative resolutions; water supply agreements; public water system and drinking water regulation; water quality regulation and resource protection; entity and regional governance; legislation and administrative agency law; and related real estate, municipal, and public utility law matters. He represents the association of municipal water utilities in Washington. Adam has significant experience leading transactional due diligence teams and providing strategic advice for complex real property and natural resources transactions. Best Lawyers named Adam a “Lawyer of the Year” for water law in 2022 and 2024.
RHETT LARSON is the Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. He is also a senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy. Rhett’s research focuses on international and domestic water law and policy. He works on dispute resolution in water rights adjudications in Arizona and the Colorado River Basin. He was appointed by the Governor of Arizona to the board of directors of the Arizona Mexico Commission. He leads a USAID-funded project improving water supplies in Lebanon and Jordan. He was a visiting professor and Fulbright Scholar at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador and a Lady Davis Fellow and visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Just Add Water: Solving the World’s Problems Using its Most Precious Resource (Oxford University Press, 2020) and, with Vanessa Casado Pérez, co-editor of A Research Agenda for Water Law (Edward Elgar, 2023). Rhett practiced natural resource law with firms in Arizona, focusing on water rights and water quality. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago and his M.Sc. from the University of Oxford in Water Science, Policy, and Management.
If available, this course will include materials (PowerPoints presentations and scholarly papers) authored by the speaker or speakers.
