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Since those water rights were attached to the irrigated land as an appurtenance, to the land that the farmers own, and since there must be, by the constitution, a reckoning for any taking of property ... their rights have indeed been violated IMHO.

In addition, the Government has defaulted on a contract with these people as respects the ownership and title of the distribution system for the water.

Both cases require the government, if it wishes to maintain any legitimacy regarding this situation, to fulfill its obligations constitutionally and contractually.

Finally, the means by which the government has gone about violating the rights of these people and not fulfilling their obligations (via the Endangered Species Act and via admittedly flawed scientific findings as evidence) are themselves unconstitutinal IMHO.

To date, even though water is again flowing (and I thank God and the brave people who stood against this for that), none of the critical issues have been addressed or resolved.

I thought about mentioning to Pohbah that while I was making an argument with him going in one direction, I had previously made arguments with you going in the other direction.

Whatever the best case the farmers may have, I think that injecting contitutionality into it just muddys the water and shifts the focus.

I tend to think of it in terms of water rights since there are those there that have riparian rights and there are those there that have water relocated to them via a ditch with some of them having senior rights and some having junior rights. Since they have been relegated to "unintended beneficiaries", their contractural rights don't seem to strong.

Whatever the case may be, the real issue is that the feds have trumps in that they can set minimum lake levels for the endangered sucker and minimum flow rates to satisfy treaty rights.

I think Bush has done some good things there as far as bringing in NAS, acquiring the water upstream, and trying to split the indians and the enviros, but the fact remains that only Congress can solve it permenantly.

To date, even though water is again flowing (and I thank God and the brave people who stood against this for that), none of the critical issues have been addressed or resolved.

That is what all my research is about. BUMP and BTTT.