Well, the Supreme Court’s thinking has not yet reached Florida.
As we use and waste more and more water we will see mounting legal disputes regarding ownership. As is the case here, it can be applied to the very same issue with Ginnie Springs and extracting water to be sold for private profits.
When one of the owners of Seven Springs Water Company claimed the water under their property as theirs to do with as they pleased, we see the similarity to Mississippi and the judgement of this country’s highest court.
Here the people of Florida were the losers as this private company was given the state’s blessing to further destroy one of the people’s treasures — the springs and the Santa Fe River, for their personal gain.
No, this is not right but this is the official mindset of our water mismanagers, which is to use up what is there with no thought for the future.
How utterly stupid!
Read the original article here in the Memphis Daily News Journal.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
How a Supreme Court Decision Could Change the Future of Memphis’ and the South’s Drinking Water
Dec. 2, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court set clear rules last week for how it views the untold gallons of water underneath eight states – the water belongs to every state that relies on it.
For years, Mississippi claimed Tennessee and the city of Memphis were stealing billions of gallons of water from underneath it. The High Court did not buy it.
In a Nov. 22 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court, said “The Court rejects Mississippi’s contention that it has a sovereign ownership right to all water beneath its surface that precludes application of equitable apportionment.”
That clunky phrase, equitable apportionment, signals a new era for not just how the Middle Claiborne Aquifer will be governed but all interstate aquifers, water law and policy experts said in interviews with The Commercial Appeal last week.
Those same experts said the ruling could open the door to further cooperation among the states that use the Middle Claiborne Aquifer, and, maybe, revive a long-talked-about idea — an interstate compact among the states.
“One thing the U.S. Supreme Court made clear is that equitable apportionment applies to groundwater, which the court had never ruled on before,” Jesse Richardson, a water law expert and a law professor at West Virginia University, said in an interview last Tuesday. “I think it matters because now it kind of sets the parameters for relationships between states with respect to those aquifers.”
