Conflict on the Rio Grande: the Battle Over Water Distribution in the American Southwest
August 6th, 2024 — by Collin Dowson — Category: Groundwater
For more than a century the Rio Grande—a river which snakes through Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, before continuing south into Mexico—has been the focus of a number of important negotiations. Arguably the most important of these agreements has been the Rio Grande Compact, signed in 1938 by all the states who touch the river.
When one state alleges it has suffered a legal harm caused by another state, the complaining state must ask the Supreme Court of the United States–the only court that can hear disputes between states–to hear the case.
In a 6-3 opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) requires the federal government to regulate some groundwater pollutants that discharge into navigable waters. (Cty. of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, No. 18-260, 2020 WL 1941966 (U.S. Apr. 23, 2020)). The CWA prohibits the addition of any pollutant from a point source to navigable waters without the appropriate permit. In this case, the Supreme Court had to determine whether a permit is necessary “when pollutants originate from a point source but are conveyed to navigable waters by a nonpoint source, here, ‘groundwater.’”
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has developed a common law framework for resolving disputes over interstate water resources, the Court has never resolved a dispute over groundwater resources. Mississippi v. Tennessee, a case over the use of groundwater by the City of Memphis near the MS-TN border, is the first case of its kind.
