Prior appropriation
Also called: first in time, first in right
The western water doctrine under which the earliest user to put water to beneficial use holds the strongest claim, regardless of who owns the land.
Prior appropriation is the organizing principle of water law in essentially every western state, and it is the opposite of the riparian doctrine used in the East. Ownership of land touching a river gives you nothing. What gives you water is having been the first to divert it and put it to a recognized beneficial use, and having kept doing so.
The practical consequence is that water rights form a strict queue. In a short year the most senior right takes its full entitlement before the next one takes anything, and the most junior rights get nothing at all. This is why priority date, not acreage or flow, is the field that carries most of the value in a water transaction.
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