A recent water law ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court, Frees v. Tidd, 349 P.3d 259 (Colo. 2015), has raised eyebrows throughout the water bar about whether the decision condones the practice of a junior appropriator making a first use of the same physical supply of a senior water right.  Such a practice could turn the prior appropriation system on its head by, as argued by some commenters, no longer ascribing water diverted to the water right owner only.  In the worst case scenario, senior water rights could risk losing some aspect of control over their supply because it must first pass through another junior non-consumptive use – like the hydropower plant at issue in the Frees v. Tidd case. 

I don’t know about you, but my mornings are crazy.  I hit the ground running, getting my family ready for the day, getting my kids to school, getting into work on time and going full force for the rest of the day.  GO! GO! GO!  Most days are a total blur, but there is 10 minutes of my day that I have forced myself to slow down.  On the main level of our office building, is a little coffee shop called The Unseen Bean.  I think for the first six months of my job I rushed in and rushed out of the building without even giving it a second glance, but running around at that pace burns you out fast. 

Law partner Star Waring and I are recently returned from a teaching junket.  We traveled to the television studios of NBI – National Business Institute – to record a seven hour program on the law and practice of water title examination in the western United States.  Those 17 states – California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North and South Dakota – follow the doctrine of prior appropriation.  It is a continuing education class for attorneys.  In Colorado we are required to have 45 units of continuing legal education credit, including 7 units of study in legal ethics, every three years. 

 Summer in the Front Range has brought frequent off-season cool temperatures and heavy rains.  As many wonder whether this is extraordinary, or merely the new normal, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to plod away on finalizing Carbon Pollution Standards for Existing Power Plants, known generally as the Clean Power Plan.  EPA proposed a draft Clean Power Plan last June pursuant to its authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), and following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that confirmed EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant that could endanger human health and the environment (Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)).  EPA has indicated it will issue a final rule mid-summer.