WRATHA: Regulatoins for Implementing the ASCE Riparian Model Water Code

In this paper, I outline the salient features of a new ASCE guidelines document on administering a water permits system for areas that have traditionally been under the Riparian legal doctrine. These Guidelines are a means of implementing the ASCE Riparian Model Water Code on a day-to-day basis, and are intended to be an executive-branch model in the way that the Code is a legislative-branch model. The Guidelines cover such executive-branch decisions as: basis of initial allocation, duration, transfers, averaging periods, administrative fees, monitoring and enforcement, basis of definition, and special issues related to groundwater. As the ASCE Regulated Riparian Model Water Code is in its final stages of completion, it became clear that the Code, which was a piece of model legislation, has as its primary function the enabling of State or Provincial controls over water withdrawals from natural watercourses. The implementation of that code was, appropriately, left largely unaddressed. The task of crafting the detailed rules, regulations, and procedures necessary for the day-to-day administration of water withdrawal control programs, typically the responsibility of the executive, rather than legislative, branch of government, is not, and was not intended to be, addressed in the Code.