FEATURE ARTICLE

April 2007

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Allegretti v. County of Imperial: Return to Reason

Environmental damage begets environmental regulation. For the better part of a century, the nation’s courts have validated the public regulation of proprietary groundwater rights whose exercise has threatened the well being of other users or the public. In 1933 the California Supreme Court confirmed a local government’s police power to limit groundwater pumping. In 1979 the Washington Supreme Court sustained a state agency order that an active well operator limit its withdrawals. In 1981, the Arizona Supreme Court protected its state’s new groundwater law from the claim that any limit on pumping would unconstitutionally confiscate property. And in 1994, the California Court of Appeal rejected a categorical preemption challenge to county groundwater regulation. In the best sense of the word “progressive,” groundwater jurisprudence has rationally advanced to enable legislative response to ever-increasing threats to our most heavily used domestic water source.