Conflicting Norms in the Struggle for Communitary Governance in the Acequias of the Upper Rio Grande Watershed

Abstract

This paper offers extended commentary on the challenges posed by the law and ethos of prior appropriation, long dominant in the western United States as the foundation of water rights, for a newly resurgent commitment to communitary water conservation and management in the hispano acequia communities of the south central part of the State of Colorado, lying in the headwaters bioregion of the RioGrande watershed known as the "Upper Rio Grande," or the "Rio Arriba."