   water law is the field of law dealing with the ownership, control, and use of water as a resource. it is most closely related to property law, but has also become influenced by environmental law. because water is vital to living things and to a variety of economic activities, laws attempting to govern it have far-reaching effects. ==history== the history of people's relation to water illustrates varied approaches to the management of water resources. "lipit ishtar and ur nammu both contain water provisions, pre-date hammurabi by at least 250 years, and clearly provide the normative underpinnings on which the hammurabi code was constructed." the code of hammurabi was one of the earliest written laws to deal with water issues, and this code included the administration of water use. the code was developed about 3,800 years ago by king hammurabi of babylonia.jones, p. andrew, and cech, tom. colorado water law for non-lawyers. boulder, co, usa: university press of colorado, 2009. the etruscans had a deep knowledge of hydrology and hydraulics, a knowledge which they put to good use in their many land drainage schemes. the lower lying portions of rome such as the area between the capitol and velia was formerly marshland. settlement of the low-lying ground would never have been a possibility without the hydraulic engineering skills of the etruscans. this took place around 625 bce when, according to archaeological evidence a network of drainage channels was dug through the marshy ground, and at the same time, the stream that separated the two hills of the capitoline and palatine was regulated, its embankments were strengthened, and it was finally covered over. without enclosure and drainage, more than half of the area of the present-day netherlands would be flooded with every high tide, every wet season, or permanently. the struggle for the country's survival has largely determined its appearance and left numerous marks on it. in the triangle between the cities of amsterdam, haarlem and leiden the  haarlemmermeer polder demonstrates an extraordinary step in the scale of land drainage. after centuries of preliminaries, a lake of unprecedented size was drained in three years (1849â1852) and transformed into valuable agricultural land. in 1899, construction of the first aswan dam was begun to address agricultural and energy shortages exacerbated by population growth in egypt and the sudan. completed in 1902, its height was raised in subsequent building campaigns of 1907-12 and 1929-34. with the signing of the nile water agreement by egypt and the sudan in november 1959, work began on the second aswan dam. the second dam submerged much of [
Water_law