To wrap up the discussion in several previous entries on “Who Owns the Water,” I am giving into the spirit of the times and its love for listicles with this set of common misconceptions about water rights in North Carolina. There is a wonderful quality about the naivete with which most people in the southeastern United States approach water rights: it’s a naivete born of plenty, born of the fact that so few people here have had to worry about water scarcity, and even then for relatively short periods of time compared to people in arid regions of the world. But the droughts of the early 21st century proved that drought can and will happen here, too. And when the water shortages do come, that lack of practice and preparation puts us in a bad place for responding. So while we gaze at the American West at the huge challenges that drought presents, let’s not forget that our time will come again, too. When it does, let’s hope we’ve learned at least a few things from past problems. Of course, the hardest lessons to learn are the ones we think we already understand, but in fact we have wrong. Here are five of those things concerning water rights.
1. “If someone upstream is using too much water and drying up my intake (or my well), government will step in and protect me.”
The pervasiveness of this belief was confirmed for me in the last two major droughts, when I received calls from many people in the piedmont (and a few in the mountains) who were sure there was something government could and would do to protect their inflows, if only they knew the right person to call. No, sorry, in North Carolina, at present, the State’s role (I am including local government here in using the word “State”) is very limited when it comes to regulating water withdrawals. The public water systems whose run-of-river intakes ran dry or nearly dry in the last two major droughts (including Shelby, Statesville and Rocky Mount) had to figure out their own way to find out where “their” water (see next lesson) went when it suddenly dropped below the level of their intake. If and when they succeeded (by aerial and on-foot inspections) in finding the upstream extractors (most often agricultural irrigators who had placed temporary pipes and pumps in the stream), the best they could do was to try to negotiate, with little or no legal backing.
North Carolina did pass a law in 1991 (see G.S. 143-215.22H and the rules that implement it) that requires surface and ground water withdrawers who withdraw 100,000 gallons per day or more to register their water withdrawals and surface water transfers with the State and update those registrations at least every five years. Agricultural water users can take up to one million gallons of water a day or more without registering. But what we learned in 2002-2003 and 2007-2008 is that the unpredicted shortages come downstream from temporary withdrawals, in low-flow conditions, that are not registered.
Another response to future droughts was the requirement for Water Shortage Response Plans required by the legislature in 2003 as part of the longstanding Local Water Supply Plans. North Carolina’s water supply planning initiative originally developed as a response to a severe drought that occurred in 1988. The first Local Water Supply Plans were submitted to the State’s Division of Water Resources (DWR) in 1989 and primarily included data regarding municipal water demand. Every subsequent drought has generated new questions and new initiatives to piggy-back on the program first implemented in the late 1980s. You can read about these plans and review what’s been submitted here. I’m hopeful these will help, but experience already shows us that, in many jurisdictions, production of these plans is just farmed out to a consultant and the plan itself may not be understood by or even accurate for the staff and leaders of a given jurisdiction. The Water Allocation Study in 2007-2010 looked carefully at the Local Water Supply Plans, including the Water Shortage Response Plans, as of that date, and concluded that they were mostly inadequate and incomplete. As a result of this finding, the legislature required DENR approval of future plans. We shall see in the next drought how well that has worked.
The situation is even worse for wells that dry up, since there is no easy way to determine whose pumping has lowered your water levels, especially in the fragmented crystalline bedrock of the piedmont and mountain regions. Even if you find the culprit, it’s on you to take them to court and attempt to prove that their withdrawals are “unreasonable.” This is the downside of North Carolina’s easy come, easy go approach to water withdrawals. When the water gets scarce, it’s pretty much everyone for themselves, even if one of those “everyone’s” is a large public water system on which entire regional economies depend.
2. “My town’s public water supply permit says we get to take 5 million gallons per day from this stream, so we own 5 mgd.”
Public water supply systems (any system that supplies piped drinking water to at least 15 connections or 25 or more people 60 or more days per year) are permitted for a certain treatment capacity. Some system operators and owners view this permitted capacity as a right to the permitted amount of water. In fact, this number is just a statement of treatment capacity, not withdrawal rights. But it’s understandable how system owners and operators come to view it as a water right, because the review process for new and expanded surface water plants has evolved to include some review (occasionally a sophisticated, site-specific review) of the amount of source water available for treatment.
Anyone who wants to build or expand a public water supply system must first have their plans reviewed and approved under the Safe Drinking Water Act (among other permits). There are a huge number of these systems in North Carolina (over 6000), which is nationally famous for having many small systems. These systems are obviously critical to public health. The public water supply regulators typically review around 2000 applications each year. Most of the review by the Public Water Supply section concerns engineering and system management details. But systems that plan to withdraw or increase withdrawals of surface water also have regulatory attention paid to the source of water that will be treated and distributed.
The actual regulatory driver for review of source water withdrawal capacity and effects can vary; possibilities include environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act, the N.C. Dam Safety Law, federal energy laws, and the federal Clean Water Act Sections 401 or 404. For example, structures (such as permanent intake structures) placed in streams to withdraw water for any purpose may require a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
Until the 1990s, the typical State review given to new or expanded surface water treatment plants was nothing or a comparison of projected demand with a flow statistic generated by the U.S. Geological Survey, the 7Q10 (the 7-day, 10-year low flow, a low flow estimation that is also used for wastewater discharge permitting). Starting in the late 1980s, the State began requiring some projects to conduct an “instream flow study” because the proposed maximum withdrawal amount was a significant percentage of the 7Q10. No instream flow study was (or is) required if the water withdrawal for the proposed project is less than 20% of the 7Q10. Today, the location of the proposed project and the habitat rating of the downstream aquatic habitat will determine how deep an analysis is used to determine the permitted capacity. The NC Wildlife Resources Commission does the habitat rating. The State has developed some hydrological models of flow in each river basin to improve everyone’s understanding of how much water will be available in stream segments. A group of water resources and wildlife experts who have reviewed North Carolina’s approach to instream flows recommended adoption of flow regimes that are driven by the amount of disturbance to the ecological integrity of the stream. The legislature concurred, and the State has developed quite sophisticated methods for considering ecological flows, but the fate of those methods will have to await another blog entry–the story is itself long and complicated.
Meanwhile, the reality is that the science behind the number that represents a public water system’s permitted treatment capacity for surface water sources varies tremendously–from state-of-the-art site specific review and full hydrologic modeling, to literally nothing (for systems that were permitted prior to around 1990 and have not expanded since then). The number is not a legal guarantee by the State that a certain amount of water will be available to a water system. Only a State water withdrawal permitting system could supply that sort of guarantee.
3. “The city (or county) can force you to stop using your well.”
Cities and counties have a lot of power over things in their jurisdiction that might cause harm to other people or to their water systems. For example, they have broad powers to enact rules to protect their public enterprises, and they can force property owners in close proximity to water lines to connect to the public system. In times of drought, when city and county water systems are requiring their customers to cut back on water use, it’s natural for those water systems and their customers to want to curtain groundwater withdrawals by people in the jurisdiction. There are also places in the state (notably Wake County) where private well users believe their wells are systematically being interfered with by other well users, and the local governments have been called on to try to resolve these well interference conflicts. In the two major droughts of the early 21st century, several local governments attempted in one way or another to force private well users to curtail or stop pumping groundwater. To my knowledge, none of these attempts faced litigation from the property owners. In my opinion, and that of my predecessor at the School of Government, the great N.C. water law expert Milton Heath, neither cities nor counties nor any other owners of public water systems in the state have clear legal power to force property owners to curtail groundwater use. Only the State, acting through the legislature or the Environmental Management Commission (under the Water Use Act of 1967, G.S. 143-215.11 through .22 which allows creation of “Capacity Use Areas”) clearly has that power. So a city or county that tries to force someone to stop using a well, other than for a public health reason, is skating on very thin legal ice.
The State’s Well Construction Act (Article 7 of G.S. Chap. 87) does allow for local regulation and more stringent standards than the State’s. See G.S. § 87-96. This is fairly broad language and might be read to support a groundwater quantity concern, especially given any health-related bases that a local government might document in connection with wells that dry up. However, the Well Construction Act goes on:
Provided, however, that the Environmental Management Commission shall not reject any application under this subsection for permission to construct a well except upon the ground that the well would not be in compliance with a provision of this Article [the Well Construction Act] or with a rule or regulation of the [EMC under the Well Construction Act].
GS 87-88(a).
Furthermore, in 2011 the General Assembly passed Session Law 2011-255, which added this language to the Well Construction Act:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no permit for a well that is in compliance with this Article and the rules adopted pursuant to this Article shall be denied on the basis of a local government policy that discourages or prohibits the drilling of new wells.
G.S. 87-97(e) (emphasis added).
There is also the problem that North Carolina has treated groundwater as a property right, to an extent, as discussed in an earlier post. North Carolina has adopted a rule of law concerning groundwater that states, in essence, that property owners are legally entitled to make reasonable use of the groundwater beneath their property for purposes that benefit and concern that same property. On the other hand, this rule—the ‘American rule’—does not recognize a landowner’s right to withdraw groundwater for the purpose of distributing and selling it to benefit other properties, if that withdrawal would work to the detriment of properties that adjoin the point of withdrawal. See Bayer v. Nello Teer Company, 256 N.C. 509 (1962).
Thus a prohibition by a local government on water withdrawals of all types could run into major legal challenges, including “takings” claims, by persons who assert that the right to use their groundwater is a fundamental property right that came to them with the purchase of their property. On the other hand, a prohibition on the water withdrawals made for the purpose of selling and distributing water elsewhere might be done consistent with these common law property rights. There would probably be a legal challenge to the local unit’s power along these lines, but it is possible a court would stretch the local police powers to permit it to extend the common law rule in this way..
4. “Agriculture is an insignificant water user in NC”
It’s all about seasonality. Ag advocates make this claim based on annual averages. Annual averages are meaningless when it comes to competition for water in low-flow season, which in North Carolina is generally late summer and fall. At this time nearly every year there is the “triple witching hour” of low precipitation; high demand for energy from air conditioning, which uses huge quantities of water; and a need for irrigation of crops if the ag producer has a farm that relies on irrigation. The result is that, in the critical time period of late summer and early fall, agricultural water use is a huge factor in overall water demand in North Carolina. Here is an estimate prepared by N.C. DENR near the end of the drought of 2007-2009:
5. “Power generation appears to use a lot of water, but most of it is returned so consumptive use is low”
The main ways in which we produce electricity all consume large amounts of water, providing multiple opportunities for efficiency improvements. Thermoelectric power plants burn fossil fuels to heat water and generate steam, and lose massive amounts of water to evaporation in cooling the condensors. Nuclear plants also use massive amounts of water for cooling, and lose water through evaporation. Hydroelectric power involves storage of water in reservoirs, and these reservoirs are increasingly used also as drinking water sources, but they lose water to evaporation from the reservoir. Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) requires large volumes of water.
Estimates of the amount of water consumed in generating a kilowatt of electricity range from an aggregate total for the United States of 2.0 gal/kWh (7.6 L/kWh) of fresh water evaporated per kWh of end-use electricity (noting thermoelectric average of 0.47 gal/kWh) (1.8 L) and hydroelectric power plants evaporated 18 gal (68 L) of fresh water per kWh consumed by the end user* to estimates as high as 27 gal/kWh (attributed to U.S. Department of Energy by Catawba RiverKeeper).
It’s true that the enormous volumes of water withdrawn from lakes and rivers to cool power plants do not take into account the large return flows, so that the consumptive use percentage from power generation is lower than many other uses. But it remains that case that a typical power plant in North Carolina can easily use the same amount of water in a day as a medium-size town will use. So energy conservation (or generation by solar or wind) is also water conservation.
*(Consumptive Water Use for U.S. Power Production December 2003 • NREL/TP-550-33905 P. Torcellini, N. Long, and R. Judkoff National Renewable Energy Laboratory 1617 Cole Boulevard Golden, Colorado 80401-3393 NREL is a U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory Operated by Midwest Research Institute • Battelle Contract No. DE-AC36-99-GO10337
28 Responses to “Five common misconceptions about water rights in N.C.”
Chris
I recently moved to Albemarle, NC. My home is on city water but there is a preexisting well. I called utilities and was told once a home is on city water you can not change back. Is this true?
Richard Whisnant
You can use your well, in theory, but it would likely cost you so much that it’s improbable you’d want to do it. To connect your well to your home plumbing, you’d have to meet anti-cross connection standards in the State building code that ensure there is no contact between the well water and city water. Costs would not just include a lot of plumbing, but also potentially a periodic charge from the city system to ensure that your cross-connection prevention continues to function properly. You also could be charged an availability fee (the base, monthly service charge) for the city water even though you weren’t using it. Finally, if there are any bacteriological or other problems with your well water, you’d have to contend with local health department concerns and conceivably city code enforcement issues involving a house with potentially unsafe water. If you later decide to sell the house, this whole arrangement would be a big red flag for realtors and buyers. For all these reasons, you’d very likely end up spending a lot more money than you currently spend on water. Also for all these reasons, your city system rarely or never runs into this situation, so it would take you a lot of time and effort to educate them. A likely better solution is to use the well, assuming it is still functioning properly and the water is safe, only for water that is not connected to your household plumbing.
Chris
I recently moved to Albemarle, NC. My home is on city water but there is a preexisting well. I called utilities and was told once a home is on city water you can not change back. Is this true?
Richard Whisnant
You can use your well, in theory, but it would likely cost you so much that it’s improbable you’d want to do it. To connect your well to your home plumbing, you’d have to meet anti-cross connection standards in the State building code that ensure there is no contact between the well water and city water. Costs would not just include a lot of plumbing, but also potentially a periodic charge from the city system to ensure that your cross-connection prevention continues to function properly. You also could be charged an availability fee (the base, monthly service charge) for the city water even though you weren’t using it. Finally, if there are any bacteriological or other problems with your well water, you’d have to contend with local health department concerns and conceivably city code enforcement issues involving a house with potentially unsafe water. If you later decide to sell the house, this whole arrangement would be a big red flag for realtors and buyers. For all these reasons, you’d very likely end up spending a lot more money than you currently spend on water. Also for all these reasons, your city system rarely or never runs into this situation, so it would take you a lot of time and effort to educate them. A likely better solution is to use the well, assuming it is still functioning properly and the water is safe, only for water that is not connected to your household plumbing.
Claudia Eldridge
Is it possible in North Carolina for a home owner to purchase the right to their own ground water if they are on their own well?
I have heard that in some states, local governments are putting meters on private wells and homeowners are being taxed to use the water from the wells they paid to put in on their own property.
Also, do you know of any legislative agenda moving toward the NC Legislature to clarify this isssues in NC?
Richard Whisnant
No, it’s not possible for a home owner to buy their own groundwater, nor is it necessary. As I discuss in a blog entry from last year, http://elinc.sog.unc.edu/who-owns-the-water-pt-1-groundwater/, home owners already have the right to make “reasonable use” of the groundwater. There is no one who owns superior rights who could sell the homeowner more, except the State itself, and to get control over that groundwater, at present, the State would have to declare it a “Capacity Use Area” (requiring a long rulemaking process based on demand exceeding supply) or would have to find some health problem with it and order it closed for human consumption.
There are a lot of states that have more carefully regulated groundwater, with California getting much press recently for having started a process to increase groundwater control there. But those are states where the overall concern about water availability is higher than NC, and where the state has more formally and legally recognized that the groundwater and surface water are connected.
The N.C. General Assembly has shown more interest in water supply and groundwater over the past ten years than it had in the 20th century, due in no small part to the two large droughts of the 2000-2010 decade. I think it’s very unlikely, though, that the legislature will attempt any major changes in water law as it affects property rights in 2016. Every such change is resisted by someone with political power. In an election year, especially, that makes it an unlikely area for legislation.
Claudia Eldridge
Is it possible in North Carolina for a home owner to purchase the right to their own ground water if they are on their own well?
I have heard that in some states, local governments are putting meters on private wells and homeowners are being taxed to use the water from the wells they paid to put in on their own property.
Also, do you know of any legislative agenda moving toward the NC Legislature to clarify this isssues in NC?
Richard Whisnant
No, it’s not possible for a home owner to buy their own groundwater, nor is it necessary. As I discuss in a blog entry from last year, http://elinc.sog.unc.edu/who-owns-the-water-pt-1-groundwater/, home owners already have the right to make “reasonable use” of the groundwater. There is no one who owns superior rights who could sell the homeowner more, except the State itself, and to get control over that groundwater, at present, the State would have to declare it a “Capacity Use Area” (requiring a long rulemaking process based on demand exceeding supply) or would have to find some health problem with it and order it closed for human consumption.
There are a lot of states that have more carefully regulated groundwater, with California getting much press recently for having started a process to increase groundwater control there. But those are states where the overall concern about water availability is higher than NC, and where the state has more formally and legally recognized that the groundwater and surface water are connected.
The N.C. General Assembly has shown more interest in water supply and groundwater over the past ten years than it had in the 20th century, due in no small part to the two large droughts of the 2000-2010 decade. I think it’s very unlikely, though, that the legislature will attempt any major changes in water law as it affects property rights in 2016. Every such change is resisted by someone with political power. In an election year, especially, that makes it an unlikely area for legislation.
Patricia Moretz
I sold my house but I still own the property that the well is on do I still have to supply water to the new homeowners
Richard Whisnant
The answer depends on your contract with the house buyer. It’s a matter of contract law and real estate law, not water law. You would need to consult with a real estate lawyer and discuss your particular sales contract to get a legal opinion.
Patricia Moretz
I sold my house but I still own the property that the well is on do I still have to supply water to the new homeowners
Richard Whisnant
The answer depends on your contract with the house buyer. It’s a matter of contract law and real estate law, not water law. You would need to consult with a real estate lawyer and discuss your particular sales contract to get a legal opinion.
Dale Rekau
living in a subdivision in Cherokee county, we have two wells. one serves 14 connections, the other serves 20 connections. Can the two wells be connected for any reason? My HOA insist for emergency use only (if one well goes down)
Last year we had one well get contaminated and when they switched to the other well it also became contaminated.
Richard Whisnant
I’m not clear whether the HOA is the well owner, or you personally are? I assume the HOA owns the wells and is also the permitted water supplier. My hunch–just a hunch, since I’m not familiar with the details of the system or exactly how it is regulated–is that there would be permit or rule language that controls when and how the wells could be connected, whether there must first be an emergency, whether the regulator has to be notified and give approval, and so forth. More than 25 people or 15 service connections makes a regulated public water system. Perhaps the HOA is trying to avoid a higher degree of regulation by keeping the systems separate?
Dale Rekau
living in a subdivision in Cherokee county, we have two wells. one serves 14 connections, the other serves 20 connections. Can the two wells be connected for any reason? My HOA insist for emergency use only (if one well goes down)
Last year we had one well get contaminated and when they switched to the other well it also became contaminated.
Richard Whisnant
I’m not clear whether the HOA is the well owner, or you personally are? I assume the HOA owns the wells and is also the permitted water supplier. My hunch–just a hunch, since I’m not familiar with the details of the system or exactly how it is regulated–is that there would be permit or rule language that controls when and how the wells could be connected, whether there must first be an emergency, whether the regulator has to be notified and give approval, and so forth. More than 25 people or 15 service connections makes a regulated public water system. Perhaps the HOA is trying to avoid a higher degree of regulation by keeping the systems separate?
Tracy Gattis
My father purchased a privately owned lake in Richmond County NC roughly 10 years ago. The seller, a corporation, ran and operated the lake as a fishing club and charged a yearly fee to all members for access and use. My father continued this same model after purchasing. The dam has been in place for over 100 years, and from all research we have conducted, the creek that feeds the lake, and the creek after the dam which runs to the Great Pee Dee river are non-navigable waters.
The problem we have run into is there are several privately owned homes and lots that are on the lake, and the owners are claiming they have riparian rights that were given to them in their deeds, and are refusing to pay the annual fee to have access and use of lake. The former corporation never pushed this issue, and just let the land owners get away with not paying the fees. Research of their deeds and chain of title going back 50 years, riparian rights were passed on From owner to owner in the deeds. We are challenging their riparian rights in the deeds, due to the fact that the creek that feeds and runs off the lake are non-navigable, which in our opinion does not give them any riparian rights and their deeds are otherwise flawed, and the right should not have been put in the documents to start with. Thus, if they access the lake from their own property or by any other means, without permission from us the owners of the lake, we should be able to have them charged with trespassing.
Do we have our facts straight according to NC law? How do we address the situation of the riparian right being stated in the deeds? This is what the land owners are baseing their case on.
Richard Whisnant
Mr. Gattis: your theory, that the water is non-navigable and therefore no riparian rights attach, is a good theory for your side to advance. I can’t give you legal advice or predict how the other side might respond–in cases such as this there are many factual challenges, and the case law is old and complicated enough that both sides generally have several strategic choices to make in their theory of the case. The best I can do is to wish you all a speedy and efficient resolution of the dispute.
Tracy Gattis
My father purchased a privately owned lake in Richmond County NC roughly 10 years ago. The seller, a corporation, ran and operated the lake as a fishing club and charged a yearly fee to all members for access and use. My father continued this same model after purchasing. The dam has been in place for over 100 years, and from all research we have conducted, the creek that feeds the lake, and the creek after the dam which runs to the Great Pee Dee river are non-navigable waters.
The problem we have run into is there are several privately owned homes and lots that are on the lake, and the owners are claiming they have riparian rights that were given to them in their deeds, and are refusing to pay the annual fee to have access and use of lake. The former corporation never pushed this issue, and just let the land owners get away with not paying the fees. Research of their deeds and chain of title going back 50 years, riparian rights were passed on From owner to owner in the deeds. We are challenging their riparian rights in the deeds, due to the fact that the creek that feeds and runs off the lake are non-navigable, which in our opinion does not give them any riparian rights and their deeds are otherwise flawed, and the right should not have been put in the documents to start with. Thus, if they access the lake from their own property or by any other means, without permission from us the owners of the lake, we should be able to have them charged with trespassing.
Do we have our facts straight according to NC law? How do we address the situation of the riparian right being stated in the deeds? This is what the land owners are baseing their case on.
Richard Whisnant
Mr. Gattis: your theory, that the water is non-navigable and therefore no riparian rights attach, is a good theory for your side to advance. I can’t give you legal advice or predict how the other side might respond–in cases such as this there are many factual challenges, and the case law is old and complicated enough that both sides generally have several strategic choices to make in their theory of the case. The best I can do is to wish you all a speedy and efficient resolution of the dispute.
Tony
HOA says no to irrigation well. Can 256 N.C. 509 come into play here?
Richard Whisnant
I’m not an expert on HOA law and haven’t researched this question. But I suspect that the covenants you signed when you acquired the lot, including the HOA process, would be viewed as defining the limits of your property rights, and therefore trumping your common law rights to the groundwater. In other words, I doubt that owning real estate that is subject to covenants and restrictions, like the HOA, is the same for water rights purposes as owning real estate in fee simple without the deed restrictions.
Concerned home owners
I have a well on my property but share w neighbors, their owners are selling to new people. Can i legally cap it off so only I have use to the well?
Richard Whisnant
I can’t give you a read on the ultimate legality. The basic water law in North Carolina does give you the right to control a well on your property, including who else might use the well. But there may be issues involving “prescriptive rights.” Or there may be claims by your neighbors that they have some kind of contractual right to the water. Contractual rights (using the water with your permission in exchange for some benefit they have given you) can always be terminated, though not always without paying a price. Prescriptive rights are a form of easement that someone gets on another’s property from using the property over a long period of time without express permission. It’s related to the idea of “adverse possession.” When you say you have “shared” the water, that sounds like the neighbors have used it with your permission, which means they would not have acquired prescriptive rights. But these sorts of arguments are very fact specific, which is why I can’t say definitively whether you’d face any legal consequences from shutting off their access. But put another way: if the neighbors can’t prove any contract rights or prescriptive rights to your well, then I don’t know of any other way they could force you to give them access (or force you to compensate them for shutting it off).
Mandy Chavis
Municipal Water question – my parents have been in their house for 20 years and had city of Asheville Water. For the last seven years they have been having issues getting water from the city in that their house and a few others is located at a high point of the water line and another local municipality (Black Mountain) is purchasing water from the city of Asheville and and shutting off access to the homeowners water for a majority of every day. it is very typical on holiday weekends for them to have no water whatsoever for days as Municipal Employees are on vacation. They have sought the advice of a licensed utility contractor and he let them know that a diverter valve and pump installed on the city Side would give them reliable and uninterrupted water but the city of Asheville Water Resources seems uninterested in doing this. Would it be worth my while to try to take them to court to force them to do this? or at least grant permission to the private utility contractor to install on the homeowner’s behalf?
Richard Whisnant
I can’t give you legal advice on your particular situation, so I don’t know whether it would be worth your while to take them to court. You could hire a lawyer and ask for her assessment of the options and likely outcomes. In general, a public water supply is legally obligated just to (1) supply you with drinking water that meets State and federal drinking water act quality requirements; (2) supply you a level of service (water quantity, pressure and timing) that meets whatever contractual agreement they have with you; and (3) not discriminate among their customers on some illegal basis (such as varying service based on race, gender or age status).
Janet crouch
I bought a home with a rental house connected to spring water located on my six acres. Seven months after my purchase my neighbor told me only family members were suppose to use the springs, and I would need to drill a well. When I consulted the attorney he said not to worry though he had failed to mention any water issues at the closing. He is the same attorney who set up the subdivision for the family. The water rights (found in the title search paperwork) state that we share the water, but I have the largest estate with two houses. I was told by previous owner (daughter who inherited land) that her brother used overflow water. Title company seems to have no responsibility to reveal water rights. I don’t want to make enemies but not sure how to handle this situation or how water is suppose to be divided. Spring barely has enough water for my homes in August. I plan to use rain barrels and install a larger cistern. Any suggestions, besides drill a well. Thank you in advance.
Richard Whisnant
You would need to talk to a lawyer to fully lay out your options and the probabilities for success for any given strategy. In general, though, the owner of land on which a spring is located is entitled to make use of the spring, as well as to decide how to allocate its waters.