Off the Grid: Navigating the complex waters of river rights

An unwitting kind of entitlement was delivered alongside the birth of our nation, in which an abundance of unimaginable resources lay before us and became the foundation upon which America built its prosperity and power.

Some of those natural resources had a voice and are still trying to be heard in the form of civil rights, reparations and land restorations.

Others are the silent victims of industry and growth, plundered and poisoned beyond recognition and with little understanding about the symbiotic necessity for their preservation and conservation.

These are the rivers and forests, their inhabitants in the form of flora and fauna, and those who rely upon the ecosystems for their own livelihood.

The Spokane River is one of the most polluted rivers in the state of Washington, but the mine that caused most of the heavy metal damage is upriver, across a lake, and in another state.

Its practices of ore extraction, inefficient at best, dumped metallurgic waste into the water for generations.

Over 100 years after its founding and despite decades of lawsuits and cleanup efforts and millions in funding, the effects are still present.

Like many similar stories of pollution around the globe, economy and commerce remained priority to the preservation of the environment, and often human life.

Likewise, it is often not until those human lives are drastically impacted (and this proven in a court of law) that change is affected.

But what of the life of the river?

This is the premise of organizations such as Earth Law Center, which have created the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Rivers, a document defining and advocating for the rights of rivers.

This emerging field of legal exploration aims to create law recognizing not only the rights of nature, but an interdependent relationship between nature and humans in which both are cultivated to thrive.

It points to building awareness of and relationship to those resources in order to develop cultural shifts and legislative protections.

Some nations are working toward this already.

Ecuador is a global leader in its efforts to bring conservation and natural rights into its constitution.

Sovereign nations of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. are also recognizing rivers as autonomous and have long demonstrated an integrated respect for such resources and their symbiotic relationship to humans.

An approach successful in some cases is the establishment of “personhood” for rivers, such as New Zealand’s ruling of the Whanganui River.

Other rivers are establishing rights as “living entities” with a range of protections granted to their banks, their flow, their water, and their right to not be polluted.

In many cases, attempts to define such legal protections are wrought with countersuits or caveats, or overturned because of the unforeseen legal complications.

Adding to this complexity is that rivers are seldom isolated to a single jurisdiction, state or even country.

Establishing rule or law in one jurisdiction does not ensure the same upriver or downriver.

Then comes the challenge of who or what entity is responsible to enforce those protections.

While conservationists and courts are untangling the possibilities of solutions, necessary progress is still being made. Each attempt is a lesson in how these approaches can be improved upon and eventually applied more effectively.

Jerry White Jr., executive director of Spokane Riverkeeper, said that even though this new creative legal approach comes with unique challenges, it is an essential part of the shift in our relationship to rivers and natural resources.

While Spokane Riverkeeper has signed the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Rivers, White noted that declaring Spokane River a personhood or living entity is not the method of protection and preservation they pursue.

Rather, the Clean Water Act and the Washington Water Pollution Control Act are the effective tools of their efforts. What White wonders is how the CWA could be strengthened to add an additional layer in which the rights of rivers are acknowledged.

“It is time for us to consider that rivers are entitled to their own rights to exist beyond their utilitarian purpose for humans,” White said.

What White noted in the same eloquent and thoughtful conversation is that he sees the issue as one of relationship, in which people can relate to the water beyond an entitled use to develop a deeper connection.

The result is a shifting of values and a better understanding of how waterways are essential to our vitality.

This is true for the farmers who rely on them for irrigation, to those who fish, to the paddlers and the floaters, to those who mostly relate to water through their taps. All of those have the commonality of a need for clean water.

“We are trying to turn this immense cultural corner,” White said, “in which we re-examine our relationship to the river and see it as not just an object.”

The question is: Will the culture change the law or the law change the culture?

When asked how we develop relationship with rivers beyond our recreative interaction and commercial pursuits, the answer, White said, may sound pedestrian: “Go and listen to it.”

It is not easy to point a finger at a single, or even a dozen singular causes of the slow destruction of natural resources vital to the survival of the human race (let alone the other races dependent upon them).

What is clear is that the issues are complex, layered and multifaceted, and that we as a society should be contemplating solutions that are equitable and sustainable.

And that the conservation of these resources must become a part of our culture if we are to survive at all.

Perhaps it is best to be contemplated while sitting at the river’s edge.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com