Community Acequias in Colorado's Rio Culebra Watershed: A Customary Commons in the Domain of Prior Appropriation

Abstract

Community control of water resources has great cultural and political importance when people’s identity and ways of living depend on their relationship to specific landscapes and natural resources. In this paper we focus on the Colorado Acequia Act, a 2009 law intended to provide an alternative and culturally specific legal regime for the management of water rights and water distribution systems in Hispano communities. We analyze the challenges of meeting the Act’s policy goals in the shadow of Colorado’s dominant prior appropriation system of water allocation. We note the continuity of the Act’s purposes with international law principles favoring recognition of a human right to water.

Keywords: water law, natural resources