Opinion ID: 2612541
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Enjoining of Groundwater Diversions Which Interfere with Surface Water Rights

Text: The BWS contends that it has a right to continue to divert and transfer water from the Waihee dike system irrespective of the rights of plaintiffs in the flow of Waihee stream because its diversions are from a groundwater source rather than from the stream itself. Conversely, plaintiffs contend that given the limitations on transferability found in McBryde, the BWS has no right to transfer water away from the property where it arises. In most jurisdictions the rights to ground and surface water have evolved separately. The common law in treating surface and groundwater as distinct failed to recognize that both categories represent no more than a single integrated source of water with each element dependent upon the other for its existence. See Haase, Interrelationship of Ground and Surface Water: An Enigma to Western Water Law, 10 S.W.U.L.Rev. 2069 (1978). Hawaii is no exception; artesian waters have been held subject to the doctrine of correlative rights, City Mill Co. v. Honolulu Sewer and Water Comm., 30 Haw. 912 (1929), stream waters have been held subject to riparian and appurtenant rights, McBryde v. Robinson , supra, and no attempt has been made to reconcile the possible conflicts between the two systems. The trend in many states has been to recognize the interrelationship between surface and groundwater sources and to combine the control and management of both under a unified statutory scheme. See, 5 Clark (ed), Waters and Water Rights, supra, § 441 at 415, and statutes cited therein. This acknowledgment of the unity of the hydrological cycle has been characterized as the modern scientific approach. Trelease, Alaska's New Water Use Act, 2 Land and Water L.Rev. 1, 15 (1967). We agree that the law must recognize that all waters are part of a natural watercourse, whether visible or not, constituting a part of the whole body of moving water. City of Colorado Springs v. Bender, 148 Colo. 458, 461, 366 P.2d 552 (1961). We therefore hold that where surface water and groundwater can be demonstrated to be physically interrelated as parts of a single system, established surface water rights may be protected against diversions that injure those rights, whether the diversion involves surface water or groundwater. See Restat. Torts 2d 858. BWS's groundwater diversions are therefore properly subject to limitation insofar as such diversions directly interfere with plaintiffs' riparian rights. [16] Having determined that BWS groundwater diversions were properly treated by the trial court as contingent upon noninterference with the established surface water rights of the plaintiffs, we do not find it necessary to address the question of the nature and extent of their rights to groundwater diversions at this time.