Tight competition for water in the West is forcing the U.S. government to assert its rights under the federal water reservation doctrine, which maintains that the federal government reserved all the water necessary to operate Indian reservations, national forests, national parks, and oil reserves. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/7.12/download-entire-issue%3C/a%3E

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Who owns the West’s water?

by Bruce Hamilton, High Country News
June 6, 1975

<h1>Who owns the West’s water?</h1> <p class="byline">by Bruce Hamilton, High Country News <br />June 6, 1975</p> <p>Tight competition for water in the West is forcing the U.S. government to assert its rights under the federal water reservation doctrine, which maintains that the federal government reserved all the water necessary to operate Indian reservations, national forests, national parks, and oil reserves. Download entire issue to view this article: <a class="external-link" href="http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/7.12/download-entire-issue">http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/7.12/download-entire-issue%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/7-12/who-owns-the-wests-water/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info Country News&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.hcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cropped-HCN_Logo-Monogram_White_Sq-2.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;quality=100&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=122521&amp;amp;ga4=G-0NS3WVPPTN&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/7-12/who-owns-the-wests-water/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/hcn.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p> Copy to Clipboard

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