Opinion ID: 2635360
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: FRANCO-AMERICAN CHAROLAISE, LTD. v. OKLAHOMA WATER RESOURCES BOARD

Text: ¶ 8 In 1990, this Court issued its opinion in Franco-American Charolaise. [12] This Court determined, among other things, (1) riparian land owners had vested common-law rights to the prospective reasonable use of stream water, even though the use was uninitiated, so long as they did not materially or substantially injure other riparian owners, [13] (2) the 1963 amendments to Oklahoma's stream water law [14] were constitutionally inadequate because they did not expressly abrogate this common-law riparian right, [15] and (3) to the extent the 1963 amendments [16] abolished or failed to preserve a riparian's common-law right in the prospective reasonable use of stream water without compensation, they violated article 2, section 24 of the Oklahoma Constitution. [17] ¶ 9 An analysis of the 1963 amendments can be found in Franco-American Charolaise. [18] For the purposes of this opinion, it is sufficient to understand that the 1963 amendments were the Legislature's initial attempt to provide a comprehensive system of stream water use by reconciling Oklahoma's two incompatible systems: the appropriative system and the riparian system. [19] In an effort to remedy the constitutional infirmities set out in Franco-American Charolaise, the 1993 Legislature amended the Oklahoma Stream Water Use Law. [20] The 1993 amendment, unlike the 1963 amendments, explicitly abrogated the common law by expressing the legislative intent to extinguish future claims to use water, except for domestic use, based only on ownership of riparian lands. [21]