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In the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, Iongwall technology accounts for an increasing proportion of underground coal mine production. lt is a highly productive, capital intensive method that provides a degree of mine safety greater than conventional methods. However, subsidence caused by Iongwall mining has been blamed for, among other things, damaging wells, springs, and streams above the mines. Surface landowners whose water supplies are affected by Iongwall mines may negotiate with mining companies for compensation, or they can seek redress in the courts. At the same time, the U.S. Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) provides a framework for regulation of the environmental effects of coal mining, including hydrologic effects. The Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy, Division of Mined Land Reclamation (DMLR) is responsible for implementation of Virginia’s primacy program under SMCRA. This research has assessed the potential of Iongwall mining to damage the groundwater and surface water resources In Southwest Virginia; and examined whether existing laws and regulations, as implemented, provide an adequate and appropriate level of protection to both water property rights and the environment. Methods included review of published and ongoing literature on effects of underground coal mining on hydrologic systems and methods of mitigation; review of mining permits and complaint investigations on file at DMLR; review of court case decisions involving mining effects on groundwater and surface water; review of regulatory documents from other states active in Iongwall mining and the Federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM); and interviews with coal company personnel, DMLR and OSM officials, researchers, and regulatory officials in other states. Review of both DMLR complaint investigations and published reports of numerous hydrologic investigations indicate that longwall mining is likely to alter the hydrologic regime in the vicinity of the mine. The knowledge base for regulation of hydrologic impacts has been inadequate but is being improved in Virginia. Both DMLR and some coal companies recognize the need for more and better data, and are taking steps to develop the requisite data and models. Regulatory personnel in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky have expressed recognition of similar data deficiencies in their states. At least one state, Ohio, has dealt with the problem of water rights by enacting legislation that assigns liability for replacing damaged water supplies to the mining companies. West Virginia, through its regulatory program, also requires water replacement. Recommendations are offered that have as their main objective the reduction of uncertainty about the effects of longwall mining and about compensation of surface owners for damage to water supplies. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / incomplete_metadata

This study examines the groundwater controversy in U.S.-Mexican relations and the role domestic political structures are likely to play in shaping a bilateral agreement apportioning transboundary groundwater. The study shows that waterpolicy making in the United States takes a distributive form while policy making in Mexico resembles a mobilization style of policy formation. It is argued that these dissimilar national water policy systems affect the way both nations engage the other in bilateral water disputes and are relvant to ascertaining the prospects for resolving the groundwater controversy. The study surveys the relevant hydrological, historical and economic context bearing on the groundwater dispute, then examines the moles of domestic policy making in each country. It follows with an analysis of how national differences in policy making are witnessed in previous bilateral water conflicts. Water policy patterns pertaining to the United States and Mexico respectively strongly influence the making of foreing policy in this sogere. Domestic policy making affects the manner of politization, objectives sought by each nation, and the diplomatic style seen in the adjustment of bilateral water agreements. Patterns seen in previous water conflicts, it is suggested, may obtain in the groundwater case. Nevertheless, the groundwater controversy is substantially different from earlier surface water disputs. Hydrological variation between problem situations is apt to fragment political interests in the United States. Nor is there a firm basis for approaching a settlement in international law. These conditions frustrate extrapolation of past political patterns to the groundwater situation. The study concludes analyzing various methods for resolving the groundwater conflict in light of political limitations. Of these alternatives, a case by case, ad hoc approach to settling the groundwater conflict is indicated as the most feasible approach. Attainment of a fully comprehensive groundwater treaty as now envisioned by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), is not likely to be achieved. However, formal comprehensiveness can be had by conferring on IBWC comprehensive authority to seek case by case solutions.

The city of Bangalore in southern India is undergoing rapid urbanisation and administrative transition. Its growth puts pressure on the available water sources – being mainly the disputed inter-State River Cauvery and the hard-rock aquifers – with ensuing problems of access. These aspects affect how rights to and over water are fulfilled and perceived. Competition for drinking water is intensifying worldwide and over a billion people are estimated to lack safe access to it. Urbanisation and other demographic trends, along with globalisation and climate change, are adding to the changing patterns of water scarcity. The role of rights in attaining and improving access to water is undoubtedly great and often referred to in the general water management debate. The notion is analysed here as having three interlinked dimensions: the right to water as a human right; water in terms of property rights; and water rights. Law treats these rights, and thereby water, differently. For instance, groundwater has traditionally been thought of as invisible and unpredictable. Partly for this reason, it is still left largely unregulated in many parts of the world. In India, according to the proverb, ‘the landlord is a water lord’. This has effects on the claim for water as a human right. The dissertation shows that we cannot talk in terms of water and rights until we are aware of how complex rights apply simultaneously, and how they correspond to obligations.

Com objetivo de alcançar o grau de doutoramento, nosso estudo se propõe a disponibilizar um roteiro de leitura jurídica com intuito de prevenir impactos ecológicos e sociais nos aproveitamentos de potenciais hidrelétricos. O trabalho tem como cerne dois instrumentos de gestão: outorga de direitos de uso de recursos hídricos e a licença ambiental. Três empreendimentos formatam a base da pesquisa: AHE Tijuco Alto, AHE de Serra da Mesa e AHE Santo Antônio Jirau. Encontram-se em ecossistemas distintos, com proteção jurídica pontual e condições sociais peculiares. Por meio de documentos jurídicos, entrevistas, recortes da mídia, pareceres e notas técnicas de órgãos e entidades competentes, procuramos levantar as fragilidades legais, priorizando para o AHE de Tijuco Alto o debate sobre a sadia qualidade de vida dos povos e comunidades da região. A verificação no que se refere à participação pública foi tema e pesquisa junto ao empreendimento da AHE de Serra da Mesa. Os levantamentos e constatações jurídicas a respeito do equilíbrio ecológico foram direcionados ao AHE do rio Madeira (Santo Antônio e Jirau). Com o estudo pretendemos demonstrar a necessidade de ações administrativas transversas entre os diversos órgãos e entidades da federação e a indispensável composição multidisciplinar nos estudos sobre meio ambiente, além de apontar a pouca atenção aos ditames legais de nosso país. / In order to achieve the doctorate degree, our study aims to provide guidelines for judicial reading with the purpose of preventing ecological and social impacts in the exploitations of hydroelectric potentials. The work has as its core two management instruments: granting of rights of use of water resources and environmental license. Three ventures have formatted the basis of the research: AHE Tijuco Alto, AHE Serra da Mesa and AHE Santo Antônio Jirau. They are three ventures held in distinct ecosystems, with precise legal protection and peculiar social conditions. Through legal documents, interviews, clips of the media, opinions and technical notes of competent agencies and entities, we tried to raise the legal weaknesses, prioritizing for the AHE Tijuco Alto, the debate on the healthy quality of life of the people and communities of the region. The verification with regard to public participation was discussed and researched at the venture of the AHE Serra da Mesa. Surveys and legal confirmations regarding the ecological balance have been targeted to the AHE of river Madeira (Santo Antônio and Jirau). With the study we intent to demonstrate the need for transverse administrative actions between the various agencies and entities of the federation and the crucial multidisciplinary composition of the studies on the environment, in addition to indicate the little attention to legal precepts of our country.

As drought becomes more common in California, effective water management has become one of the state’s most critical policy issues. During the drought of 2011-2017 specifically, the state government faced significant legal and political barriers in its attempts to implement sweeping, statewide drought management policy. First, the California water rights system prevents the state from legally curtailing the water diversions of senior water rights holders. Because of this, the State Water Resources Control Board has been engaged in ongoing litigation with senior and junior water rights holders alike over their attempts to curtail water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during the drought. Second, the Board faced local resistance to the 25% conservation order mandated in Executive Order B-29-15 due to concerns over state intervention in local issues and a disregard for the doctrine of first in time, first in right. Finally, the state passed the sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 in order to address California’s overused and under-regulated groundwater supply. While a step in the right direction, the implementation timeline of this policy is not urgent enough to protect aquifers from overdraft and saltwater intrusion. These barriers all made developing and implementing effective drought policy extremely difficult. While Executive Order B-29-15 and the curtailment notices were not meant to be permanent solutions to the drought problem, they now need to be replaced with a comprehensive package of legislation that addresses a myriad of competing interests and environmental realities.

A comprehensive model named the Cooperative Water Allocation Model (CWAM) is developed for modeling equitable and efficient water allocation among competing users at the basin scale, based on a multiperiod node-link river basin network. The model integrates water rights allocation, efficient water allocation and equitable income distribution subject to hydrologic constraints comprising both water quantity and quality considerations. CWAM allocates water resources in two steps: initial water rights are firstly allocated to water uses based on legal rights systems or agreements, and then water is reallocated to achieve efficient use of water through water transfers. The associated net benefits of stakeholders participating in a coalition are allocated by using cooperative game theoretical approaches. <br /><br /> The first phase of the CWAM methodology includes three methods for deriving initial water rights allocation among competing water uses, namely the priority-based multiperiod maximal network flow (PMMNF) programming, modified riparian water rights allocation (MRWRA) and lexicographic minimax water shortage ratios (LMWSR) methods. PMMNF is a very flexible approach and is applicable under prior, riparian and public water rights systems with priorities determined by different criteria. MRWRA is essentially a special form of PMMNF adapted for allocation under the riparian regime. LMWSR is designed for application under a public water rights system, which adopts the lexicographic minimax fairness concept. The second step comprises three sub-models: the irrigation water planning model (IWPM) is a model for deriving benefit functions of irrigation water; the hydrologic-economic river basin model (HERBM) is the core component of the coalition analysis, which searches for the values of various coalitions of stakeholders and corresponding optimal water allocation schemes, based on initial water rights, monthly net benefit functions of demand sites and the ownership of water uses; the sub-model cooperative reallocation game (CRG) of the net benefit of the grand coalition adopts cooperative game solution concepts, including the nucleolus, weak nucleolus, proportional nucleolus, normalized nucleolus and Shapley value, to perform equitable reallocation of the net benefits of stakeholders participating in the grand coalition. The economically efficient use of water under the grand coalition is achieved through water transfers based on initial water rights. <br /><br /> Sequential and iterative solution algorithms utilizing the primal simplex method are developed to solve the linear PMMNF and LMWSR problems, respectively, which only include linear water quantity constraints. Algorithms for nonlinear PMMNF and LMWSR problems adopt a two-stage approach, which allow nonlinear reservoir area- and elevation-storage relations, and may include nonlinear water quality constraints. In the first stage, the corresponding linear problems, excluding nonlinear constraints, are solved by a sequential or iterative algorithm. The global optimal solution obtained by the linear programming is then combined together with estimated initial values of pollutant concentrations to be used as the starting point for the sequential or iterative nonlinear programs of the nonlinear PMMNF or LMWSR problem. As HERBM adopts constant price-elasticity water demand functions to derive the net benefit functions of municipal and industrial demand sites and hydropower stations, and quadratic gross benefit functions to find the net benefit functions of agriculture water uses, stream flow demands and reservoir storages, it is a large scale nonlinear optimization problem even when the water quality constraints are not included. An efficient algorithm is built for coalition analysis, utilizing a combination of the multistart global optimization technique and gradient-based nonlinear programming method to solve a HERBM for each possible coalition. <br /><br /> Throughout the study, both the feasibility and the effectiveness of incorporating equity concepts into conventional economic optimal water resources management modeling are addressed. The applications of CWAM to the Amu Darya River Basin in Central Asia and the South Saskatchewan River Basin in western Canada demonstrate the applicability of the model. It is argued that CWAM can be utilized as a tool for promoting the understanding and cooperation of water users to achieve maximum welfare in a river basin and minimize the damage caused by water shortages, through water rights allocation, and water and net benefit transfers among water users under the regulated water market or administrative allocation mechanism.

A comprehensive model named the Cooperative Water Allocation Model (CWAM) is developed for modeling equitable and efficient water allocation among competing users at the basin scale, based on a multiperiod node-link river basin network. The model integrates water rights allocation, efficient water allocation and equitable income distribution subject to hydrologic constraints comprising both water quantity and quality considerations. CWAM allocates water resources in two steps: initial water rights are firstly allocated to water uses based on legal rights systems or agreements, and then water is reallocated to achieve efficient use of water through water transfers. The associated net benefits of stakeholders participating in a coalition are allocated by using cooperative game theoretical approaches. <br /><br /> The first phase of the CWAM methodology includes three methods for deriving initial water rights allocation among competing water uses, namely the priority-based multiperiod maximal network flow (PMMNF) programming, modified riparian water rights allocation (MRWRA) and lexicographic minimax water shortage ratios (LMWSR) methods. PMMNF is a very flexible approach and is applicable under prior, riparian and public water rights systems with priorities determined by different criteria. MRWRA is essentially a special form of PMMNF adapted for allocation under the riparian regime. LMWSR is designed for application under a public water rights system, which adopts the lexicographic minimax fairness concept. The second step comprises three sub-models: the irrigation water planning model (IWPM) is a model for deriving benefit functions of irrigation water; the hydrologic-economic river basin model (HERBM) is the core component of the coalition analysis, which searches for the values of various coalitions of stakeholders and corresponding optimal water allocation schemes, based on initial water rights, monthly net benefit functions of demand sites and the ownership of water uses; the sub-model cooperative reallocation game (CRG) of the net benefit of the grand coalition adopts cooperative game solution concepts, including the nucleolus, weak nucleolus, proportional nucleolus, normalized nucleolus and Shapley value, to perform equitable reallocation of the net benefits of stakeholders participating in the grand coalition. The economically efficient use of water under the grand coalition is achieved through water transfers based on initial water rights. <br /><br /> Sequential and iterative solution algorithms utilizing the primal simplex method are developed to solve the linear PMMNF and LMWSR problems, respectively, which only include linear water quantity constraints. Algorithms for nonlinear PMMNF and LMWSR problems adopt a two-stage approach, which allow nonlinear reservoir area- and elevation-storage relations, and may include nonlinear water quality constraints. In the first stage, the corresponding linear problems, excluding nonlinear constraints, are solved by a sequential or iterative algorithm. The global optimal solution obtained by the linear programming is then combined together with estimated initial values of pollutant concentrations to be used as the starting point for the sequential or iterative nonlinear programs of the nonlinear PMMNF or LMWSR problem. As HERBM adopts constant price-elasticity water demand functions to derive the net benefit functions of municipal and industrial demand sites and hydropower stations, and quadratic gross benefit functions to find the net benefit functions of agriculture water uses, stream flow demands and reservoir storages, it is a large scale nonlinear optimization problem even when the water quality constraints are not included. An efficient algorithm is built for coalition analysis, utilizing a combination of the multistart global optimization technique and gradient-based nonlinear programming method to solve a HERBM for each possible coalition. <br /><br /> Throughout the study, both the feasibility and the effectiveness of incorporating equity concepts into conventional economic optimal water resources management modeling are addressed. The applications of CWAM to the Amu Darya River Basin in Central Asia and the South Saskatchewan River Basin in western Canada demonstrate the applicability of the model. It is argued that CWAM can be utilized as a tool for promoting the understanding and cooperation of water users to achieve maximum welfare in a river basin and minimize the damage caused by water shortages, through water rights allocation, and water and net benefit transfers among water users under the regulated water market or administrative allocation mechanism.

In British Columbia, fifty-one First Nations have filed Statements of Intent signifying their interest in negotiating a treaty with Canada and the Province of British Columbia since the establishment of the British Columbia Treaty Commission in 1993. Twenty-seven of these First Nations participants claim ocean spaces within their traditional territories. Academic research and writing over the last decade has focussed on Aboriginal title to land, with little, if any reference, to ocean spaces. The concept of Aboriginal title was recently recognized by the courts in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia. My research will explore what information and legal principles could be utilized to recognize Aboriginal title to ocean spaces within the Canadian legal context, and therefore provide some bases for First Nations in substantiating their claims. My analysis will begin with a review of international law principles surrounding title to and jurisdiction over ocean spaces. Following which, I will delineate the sources available for recognizing such a theory, starting with a review of the concepts of Aboriginal title as determined in Delgamuukw and their applicability to ocean spaces. Delgamuukw has affirmed Aboriginal perspectives are an integral part of the investigation of Aboriginal title, and voices of members of two particular First Nations being the Haida Nation and the Tsawwassen First Nation, with whom I visited, will be included. Rounding out the sources will be a review of comparative legal concepts drawn from the United States and Australian experiences, and the principles espoused within international human rights materials. Having established the avenues for recognition of this concept, I then turn to discussion of its reconciliation within the Canadian legal context by reviewing theories of co-management and examining a number of settlement instruments that have yielded some degree of reconciliation between the federal government and the particular First Nation or Province involved. Comments from First Nations in respect of the obstacles that hold back reconciliation will be noted. In conclusion, my research will deduce Aboriginal title to ocean spaces is a viable legal concept in Canada, and First Nations have the resources necessary to substantiate their claims. Comments about the possibilities that may result at the treaty table or in the courts upon recognition of this concept will also be discussed. This analysis is timely and important as many First Nations are nearing the stage of the treaty process where discussions will be directed towards what territories these First Nations groups will retain and what ownership, jurisdiction and rights they will enjoy as to ocean spaces and resources. Such issues directly relate to the continued way of life, culture, and sustainable economic growth and stability of First Nation communities into the twenty-first century.

The aim of this study is to focus on how the Vulindlela Community benefited from water supplied to them through DWAF and Umgeni Water funding with emphasis on the sustainability of the project. The study also aims to find out from Vulindlela Community whether the scheme met its objectives. The sample consists of 2 888 respondents from Vulindlela area. The measuring instruments used are the interviews and questionnaire constructed by the researcher. The results of this study indicate that all the objectives of the scheme were met and that the community especially women, unemployed men and local contractors all benefited from the project. The issue of sustainability of the scheme is the real problem. The community (Branch Officers, local plumbers, meter readers and committees) has been trained in handling water related issues but the community has not accepted the ownership of the scheme. If the ownership of the scheme is lacking, there will be problems throughout. The non-payment of water used by the community will continue to be a problem if the community itself does not take the ownership of running and maintaining it. The community needs to be empowered and be trained on the operation and maintenance (OM cost recoveries and the tariff structure. The results also indicate that the community understands the free water policy and that most of them are using less than 6 kilolitres per month. The willingness to pay from the community is low, to such an extent that most of the households are due for disconnections or restriction. This is supported by the fact that most of them are earning less than RI 000 - 00 per month and in some households the bread winner is an elderly person who is dependent on government grants. The 6 kilolitre free water is not sustainable under the conditions, which this community find themselves in. There are challenges facing the scheme and these are discussed under Chapter 5. Since some limitations of this study were found, the results must be interpreted with caution and one should be cautious in applying them. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.