The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case Mississippi filed against Memphis over the latter's pumping water from the Memphis Sand aquifer. Mississippi had claimed that Memphis' pumping was taking 24 million gallons of water per day from beneath Mississippi.
For background, here are my posts from 2 February 2008, 5 February 2008, and 9 June 2009. This case was intriguing to me because it involved transboundary groundwater.
Here is a brief article from the Memphis Commercial Appeal and a longer article from E & E News:
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Colleague and friend Gabriel Eckstein is quoted in the previous article:
Because the court denied the motion without prejudice, Mississippi could petition the court at a later date if it thinks it can prove damages from Memphis' actions, said Gabriel Eckstein, a Texas Tech University law professor and director of the school's Center for Water Law and Policy. The Supreme Court has addressed many cases involving above-ground water resources, such as rivers and reservoirs, but the precedent is murkier for interstate claims on aquifers. While it is relatively easy to check the water level of a river and prove damages from diversion, analysis of an aquifer requires a conceptual model based on data points. To make a successful claim on an aquifer, a plaintiff must produce solid evidence that water has been taken, Eckstein said, and "that's a lot more difficult to produce than it is for a river."
I am grateful to John Fortuna of King & Spalding for alerting me to this; it's nice to bring closure (??) to an issue.
"The fat lady just finished singing." -- Unknown
Why would anyone find the decision by the Corporate Supreme Court difficult to understand ... there's no $$$ corporate money involved is there ...?
Posted by: PAUL F MILLER | Wednesday, 27 January 2010 at 11:11 AM