Supreme Court Will Hear Water Fight Between OK, TX Over Red River Water Transfers - NYT
It was largely overlooked last year when Fort Worth, now boasting a population of 758,000, moved closer to overtaking San Francisco in population. Yet in some ways, the Texas city’s early-21st-century growth spurt recalls the issues that San Francisco faced a century ago: if Fort Worth doesn’t get more water, its opportunities for growth will diminish rapidly. As of the 2010 census, about 1.8 million people lived in Tarrant County, which surrounds Fort Worth — 25 percent more than a decade earlier. So, like the Bay Area in the early 20th century, the county is looking far upstream for the water to support a booming population.
Six years ago, the Tarrant Regional Water District sued the Oklahoma Water Authorities after being denied permission to take water from an Oklahoma tributary of the Red River, a water source to which both states have separate rights under a 1980 compact.
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board, backed by all branches of the state’s government, has set very high bars for any water authority like Tarrant’s that wants to pull water from its rivers. Tarrant has argued that it is in “dire need” of new supplies, and the state of Texas contends that Oklahoma’s barriers, upheld by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, put “one of the most populous and productive” areas of the country at “risk for insufficient water.” On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.
One central argument the justices will wrestle with is whether Oklahoma’s restrictions on the transfer of its water to Texas violate constitutional prohibitions on restrictions in interstate commerce, or whether the 1980 compact, approved by Congress, clearly exempts water divisions from the interstate commerce clause.
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http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/supreme-court-to-decide-on-texans-bid-for-oklahomas-water/
