The Los Angeles Aqueduct bringing Owens River water to Los Angeles from 250 miles away.

Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

On February 11, 2010, the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority filed suit against the US Bureau of Reclamation claiming the Bureau violated the Authority's "area of origins" water rights.

C-WIN Board Secretary and water law attorney Michael B. Jackson has stated that he thinks this lawsuit is one of the most important water law events in recent memory.

Since it's so important, what are "area of origins" water rights?

California's area of origin statutes were born in the crucible of struggle between residents of Owens Valley and the City of Los Angeles in the early 20th century. This struggle reached its nadir when some deeply frustrated residents once seized the Alabama Hills diversion gates for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and later detonated a bomb that severed an Aqueduct pipeline in 1927.

Somehow, this episode eclipses even Mark Twain's apocryphal quote about fighting, drinking, water, and whiskey. This is hardball, the likes we haven't seen since the actions of desperate Valley residents.

An area of origin is generally understood to be an area where the headwaters of a river or other significant water body originates. The "area" may be a county, region, or other geographic region of the state.

The reason for this is the area of origin statutes. The State Legislature took notice of the conflict water struggles in Owens Valley precipitated, and in authorizing planning of a "Central Valley Project" in the 1920s, the Legislature passed a law authorizing the State to file for water rights, on June 29, 1927. Upon enactment of the law (now Water Code Section 10500), the state filed the first group of applications furthering its 1925 State Water Plan (Bulletin 12).

As Porter Towner, former Chief Counsel of the California Department of Water Resources told a Ukiah audience in October 1964 (before the Eel River and other north coast streams were deleted from the State Water Project), "As early as 1925, attempts had been made to provide legislative assurances to counties of origin that necessary water supplies would be reserved for them. These attempts reached fruition in 1931, when the county of origin law...was enacted."

There are three basic statutes in California, and the rights they create exist solely because of the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project:

• County of Origin Statute (Water Code Section 10504 to 10506, passed in 1931)
  
• Area of Origin Statute (Water Code Section 11460 to 11463, passed in 1933 as part of the Central Valley Project Act)
  
• Delta Protection Act (Water Code Section 12200 to 12205, passed in 1959 at the same time as the Burns Porter Act authorizing the State Water Project).
  

Areas of California beyond the reach of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project's water rights do not receive water right reservations under these laws.

These laws have never been tested in court; no one knows exactly what it means to have area of origin rights, or how these rights would be quantified. In January 1955, then-attorney general Edmund G. "Pat" Brown (who would later become governor in 1959) issued an opinion about area of origin laws.

Water Rights Primer