As reported in our prior post about County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, the Supreme Court punted on providing clear guidance to the regulated community on when a Clean Water Act Section 402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit is...
On April 23, 2020, a divided Supreme Court ruled in County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund that the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) “requires a permit when there is a direct discharge from a point source into navigable waters or when there is the functional equivalent...
Colorado water law provides a simplified procedure to change a water right when the only change is in the point of diversion of a surface water right where there are no intervening diversions or inflows between the old and new locations. C.R.S. § 37-92-305(3.5). This...
After nearly a decade of uncertainty, Utahans and visitors alike are looking forward to certainty on two key issues: (1) public access to and (2) navigability of the Beehive State’s premier rivers. It all started with Conatser v. Johnson, where the Utah Supreme Court...
The Colorado Supreme Court recently addressed two previously unsettled issues that will impact other water users in Grand Valley Water Users Ass’n v. Busk-Ivanhoe, Inc., 14SA303 (2016). First, the Court held that imported transbasin water may not be stored in the...
In late March, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in County of Boulder v. Boulder & Weld County Ditch Co., 367 P.3d 1179 (Colo. 2016). While this case did not involve any novel questions of Colorado water law, it did provide a clear warning to applicants for changes...
Pretrial discovery (where a party to a legal proceeding can see the evidence the other side will use) has been undergoing big changes in Colorado. One of the most significant recent changes to the Colorado rules of civil procedure is that draft expert reports and...