Also known as: permit system · administrative permit system · permit · administrative authorization
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A system of water rights under which a person obtains the right to use water from natural streams and lakes by securing a permit from a state administrative agency. The system prevails in western states where rainfall is generally less plentiful and replaces common-law riparian or prior-appropriation doctrines.
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Pierre Poulin and a partner agreed to divert water without the required state permit. They completed the diversion and obtained an administrative permit after the fact. Under the merger rule the completed substantive violation absorbed the agreement, so the state could convict only on the permit violation and not on a separate conspiracy charge.
Priscilla Parks presided over a contested water-permit hearing. During the proceeding she made repeated remarks disparaging the applicant's ethnicity. The comments violated the rule against manifesting bias in judicial duties, requiring her recusal and a new hearing before an impartial judge.
Peter Park, formerly a state water-resources employee, later represented a private client seeking a permit to use information he had obtained about a competitor's application. The rule barred him from using the confidential government information to the competitor's material disadvantage.
Piper Patel obtained a water-use permit and spent substantial sums constructing diversion works in good-faith reliance on it. When the agency later attempted to revoke the permit through rezoning, the vested-rights doctrine protected her right to complete the project.
Philip Powell could not attend the administrative hearing on his water-permit application. He executed a written proxy authorizing a third party to appear and present evidence on his behalf, satisfying the state's allowance for proxy participation in permit proceedings.
Parker Phillips, the sole witness with personal knowledge of stream-flow data, resided in another state. For good cause the court permitted his testimony in the permit appeal by contemporaneous video transmission, preserving the requirement of open-court testimony while accommodating compelling circumstances.
The permit system requires an applicant to obtain an administrative permit before using water. Riparian rights attach to ownership of land adjacent to the watercourse. Prior appropriation grants rights based on the chronological order of beneficial use.
States west of the Missouri River where annual rainfall is lower generally rely on the permit or administrative system for allocating water rights.
…80 Harv. L. Rev. 1165, 1229-1234 (1967). Finally, government actions that may be characterized as acquisitions of resources to permit or facilitate uniquely public functions have often been held to constitute “takings.” United States v. Causby , 328 U. S. 256 (1946), is illustrative. In holding that direct overflights…