Opinion ID: 2047301
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Prior Appropriation

Text: As noted, under constitutional and statutory provisions, streamflows are allocated by priority in time. In its first attempt to state a claim, Spear T relies on prior appropriation. Spear T argues that because the water is hydrologically connected and because it has a prior surface water appropriation, it has priority to the water. According to Spear T, the water is all one stream and, as such, Spear T's prior appropriation takes priority over other users of the water, including those who withdraw the water from under its lands. Thus, Spear T essentially asks this court to apply legislatively created surface water priorities to ground water use without considering existing common-law rules. We decline to adopt this approach for several reasons. First, an application of surface water priorities to ground water requires this court to agree with a legal fiction that considers the ground water to be an underground stream. We take as true that the water is hydrologically connected, but water rarely runs in a true underground stream. See Richard S. Harnsberger & Norman W. Thorson, Nebraska Water Law & Administration § 1.07 at 13-14 (Butterworth Legal Publishers 1984). Adherence to such a view ignores reality. Second, no statutory or case law authority supports applying surface water appropriations to ground water. We recognize that most legislatures in western states have developed comprehensive appropriation systems overseen by administrative agencies. See Restatement (Second) of Torts, ch. 41, topic 4 (1979). But in Nebraska, the Legislature has not developed an appropriation system that addresses direct conflicts between users of surface and ground water that is hydrologically connected. Finally, the prior appropriation rule that Spear T advocates would give first-in-time surface water appropriators the right to use whatever water they want to the exclusion of later-in-time ground water users. This could have the effect of shutting down all wells in any area where surface water appropriations are hydrologically connected to ground water. Richard S. Harnsberger et al., Groundwater: From Windmills to Comprehensive Public Management, 52 Neb. L.Rev. 179, 248 (1973) ([i]f the doctrine of prior appropriation [was] carried to [its] logical conclusion, all Nebraska wells would be shut down). This would unreasonably deprive many ground water users. Accordingly, we decline to apply the statutory surface water appropriation rules to conflicts between surface and ground water users.