Jeff Lane
SRP Media Relations
(602) 236-2500
March 1, 2010
MEDIA ADVISORY
Landmark water-rights ruling turns 100
Kent Decree of 1910 led to development of the Salt River Valley
It took nearly three years of testimony and about five years of gathering and studying evidence, but one judge's ruling — made 100 years ago today — continues to play an important role in ensuring sustainable water supplies for the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.
On March 1, 1910, Judge Edward Kent of the District Court of the Territory of Arizona issued an opinion that clarified water rights and became a landmark in water law that still governs water management in Arizona. The 1910 Kent Decree resolved a dispute among landowners in the Salt River Valley concerning rights to the natural or normal flow of the Salt River and its tributaries. Judge Kent determined the amount of water entitled to be used on individual parcels of land throughout the Salt River Valley.
The decree set the stage for the investment by the federal government in developing the Salt River Project, the cornerstone of which is Theodore Roosevelt Dam and Reservoir. By permanently binding water and land together in the Valley, Kent helped provide certainty for water supplies for an emerging economy in the desert.
"Earlier decrees only divided the water for particular areas served by certain canal systems," said Shelly Dudley, an SRP senior historical analyst. "This was problematic because the lawsuits only established the respective water rights of individual plaintiffs and defendants in a case, without regard to the rights of all the other water users in the Valley."
In order to resolve these problems, the U.S. Reclamation Service urged the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association to initiate a "friendly" lawsuit among its members to settle the water-rights disputes that had clogged the local courts for years. Filed in 1905, the suit, Patrick T. Hurley v Charles F. Abbott and 4,800 Others, was important to the federal government because it needed to know how much water it had a right to store behind the rising Theodore Roosevelt Dam and how to distribute the water that would normally flow to the lands in the Valley. The federal government was so adamant about the need to settle the water-rights issue that it became a requirement prior to finishing the dam.
"The lawsuit initially generated considerable opposition," Dudley said, "because the case would be complicated, expensive and drawn out."
However, once the federal government entered the suit as a cross-complainant on behalf of the Salt River and Fort McDowell Indian reservations, it became clear that the case would be brought to an imminent conclusion. Since all Valley interests eventually came together for the case, including farmers, cities, Native American communities, corporations, canal companies and the federal government, Kent's decree is still used today to administer water deliveries to land within the Salt River Project.
Kent, an arbitrator and settler of disputes since childhood, came to the Salt River Valley when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him chief justice of the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court in 1902. Kent served for more than 10 years. One newspaper reported that Judge Kent, who heard hundreds of intricate cases, "decided them all with equal impartiality and justice."
Now, a century later, the Kent Decree remains the basis of water rights administration and continues to provide certainty for water supplies in the Salt River Valley. While SRP negotiates settlements with other entities to achieve the best possible resolution of its water rights, it is the 1910 Kent decision that SRP today bases its shareholders' water rights to the normal flow of the Salt and Verde rivers.
SRP is the greater Phoenix metropolitan area's largest supplier of renewable water supplies, delivering about 1 million acre-feet to agricultural, urban and municipal water users.
