Court Opinion

ID: 9795752
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:37:40.545008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:36:00.873071
License: Public Domain

Rose, J.,
with whom Shearing, J., agrees, concurring:
I concur in the majority opinion and its conclusion that the federal decree court is the proper forum to consider the specific relief requested by the petitioners. As we defer to the federal district court, however, I believe that we should affirmatively address the existence and role of the public trust doctrine in the State of Nevada.
In its most fundamental terms, the public trust doctrine provides that, as a matter of federal law, all of a state’s navigable waterways are held in trust by the state for the benefit of the people and that a state official’s control of those waters is forever subject to that trust.1 The trust stems from the fact that when Nevada joined the union in 1864, it obtained from the federal government title to all land below the high water mark under the equal footing doctrine of the Statehood Clause of the United States Constitution.2 The title obtained, however, was not absolute. Instead, as the United States Supreme Court explains:
[The title] is a title different in character from that which the state holds in lands intended for sale. ... It is a title held in trust for the people of the state, that they may enjoy the navigation of the waters, carry on commerce over them, and have liberty of fishing therein, freed from the obstruction or interference of private parties.3
Although the original objectives of the public trust were to protect the public’s rights in navigation, commerce, and fishing, the *247trust has evolved to encompass additional public values — including recreational and ecological uses.4 Additionally, although the original scope of the public trust reached only navigable water, the trust has evolved to encompass non-navigable tributaries that feed navigable bodies of water.5 This extension of the doctrine is natural and necessary where, as here, the navigable water’s existence is wholly dependent on tributaries that appear to be over-appropriated.
In light of the foregoing authorities, the existence of the public trust doctrine in Nevada appears to be beyond debate. As NRS 533.025 unambiguously states, “[t]he water of all sources of water supply within the boundaries of the state whether above or beneath the surface of the ground, belongs to the public.” This court has itself recognized that this public ownership of water is the ‘ ‘most fundamental tenet of Nevada water law.’ ’6 Additionally, we have noted that those holding vested water rights do not own or acquire title to water, but merely enjoy a right to the beneficial use of the water.7 This right, however, is forever subject to the public trust, which at all times “forms the outer boundaries of permissible government action with respect to public trust resources.”8 In this manner, then, the public trust doctrine operates simultaneously with the system of prior appropriation.
All parties are understandably concerned about the economic impact the lack of water in Walker River or Walker Lake would have on them or their communities. Hawthorne residents are concerned about the loss of a fabulous recreational site, the Paiute Reservation is concerned about keeping sufficient water in Weber *248Reservoir, and the Mason Valley ranchers are worried about sufficient irrigation water for their crops. While the issue today focuses on insufficient water flowing into Walker Lake, which itself is arguably the first actual appropriation, each appropriator may in the future have to worry about his or her water allocation not being sustained as the upstream use continues to absorb a vast majority of the water.
A better approach would be to determine if all appropriators can be accommodated by a plan that will save the essentials of everyone’s water needs. This, of course, is what we hope will happen in federal district court. However, a substantial diminution in any natural resource adversely impacts all of us, whether we are water appropriators or not. It is not just the water appropriators who have a vested interest in the water from the Walker River, but every citizen of Nevada as well. It is this water that will dictate whether Walker Lake survives in its present state or becomes a dry lake bed. The stakes at issue go well beyond those who are economically interested in the water from Walker River. The public expects this unique natural resource to be preserved and for all of us to always be able to marvel at this massive glittering body of water lying majestically in the midst of a dry mountainous desert. Chief Seattle wisely observed over a century ago:
This we know:
The Earth does not belong to Man,
Man belongs to the Earth.
All things are connected,
like the blood which unites one family.
We do not weave the web of life,
We are but a strand in the web of life.
What we do to the web we do to ourselves.
If the current law governing the water engineer does not clearly direct the engineer to continuously consider in the course of his work the public’s interest in Nevada’s natural water resources, then the law is deficient. It is then appropriate, if not our constitutional duty, to expressly reaffirm the engineer’s continuing responsibility as a public trustee to allocate and supervise water rights so that the appropriations do not “substantially impair the public interest in the lands and waters remaining.”9 “[T]he public trust is more than an affirmation of state power to use public property for public purposes. It is an affirmation of the duty of the state to protect the people’s common heritage of streams, lakes, marshlands and tidelands, surrendering that right of pro*249tection only in rare cases when the abandonment of that right is consistent with the purposes of the trust.”10 Our dwindling natural resources deserve no less.

See Illinois Central R.R. Co. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387 (1892).

See Act of March 21, 1864, ch. 36, 13 Stat. 30; see also Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 212, 230 (1845) (holding that the land under navigable waters was not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but was reserved to the states, respectively, and that new states have the same rights, jurisdiction, and sovereignty over the soil under navigable water as the original states).

Illinois Central, 146 U.S. at 452.

See Illinois Central, 146 U.S. at 460 (“[The governing of the public trust] must vary with varying circumstances. The legislation which may be needed one day for the [waterway in question] may be different from the legislation that may be required at another day.”); National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, 658 P.2d 709, 719 (Cal. 1983) (“ ‘In administering the trust the state is not burdened with an outmoded classification favoring one mode of utilization over another.’ ” (quoting Marks v. Whitney, 491 P.2d 374, 380 (Cal. 1971))); In the Matter of Water Use Permit Applications, 9 P.3d 409, 447 (Haw. 2000) (“The public trust, by its very nature, does not remain fixed for all time, but must conform to changing needs and circumstances.”).

See National Audubon, 658 P.2d at 721 (“We conclude that the public trust doctrine, as recognized and developed in California decisions, protects navigable waters from harm caused by diversion of nonnavigable tributaries.”).

Desert Irrigation, Ltd. v. State of Nevada, 113 Nev. 1049, 1059, 944 P.2d 835, 842 (1997).

See id.

Kootenai Envtl. Alliance, Inc. v. Panhandle Yacht Club, Inc., 671 P.2d 1085, 1095 (Idaho 1983).

National Audubon, 658 P.2d at 723.

Illinois Central, 146 U.S. at 452.