This portion of the general guide on Environmental and Natural Resources is a starting point for researching water law at the federal level; it describes water law research resources in the UNM Law Library and on the Internet. It does not attempt to cover international or state-specific water law. Since there is often overlap with other areas of environmental and natural resources law as well as land use, you may want to review our guides on these topics as well.
If you have any questions or need additional research assistance, please stop by the Library's Reference Desk, send us an email, or schedule one-on-one research consultation.
Journals on the topic of water law include:
Land and Water Law Review - University of Wyoming (ceased publication in 2000)
Water Law Review - University of Denver
Wyoming Law Review - replaced Land and Water Law Review
To do a comprehensive search of the journal literature on your topic, you must use journal indexes.
For research on water law around 40 or so years ago, older journals can provide excellent background information and discussions of policy issues.
Visit our LibGuide on finding Journal Articles for more information, including accessing journal indexes such as Legal Source and Index to Legal Periodicals.
Credits: Georgetown Law Library's Libguide on Water Law Resources.
Cases and materials on Water Law, George A. Gould, Douglas L. Grant, Gregory S. Weber (2010),Law Lower Floor General Collection Cal no. KF645 .G68 2010
Law of Water Rights and Resources, A. Dan Tarlock (2011 - Continually updated resource), Law Treatises Stacks - Upper Floor, Call no. KF 5569 T37 1988
Wastewater and Water Quality Compliance (CCH) (available on Westlaw)
Waters and Water Rights (Matthew Bender) (available on Lexis)
Federal and state statutes can be researched and retrieved in various forms and locations online, including annotated resources that will route you to cases and other materials related to the statutory section/s you are examining.
Title 33 of the United States Code (KF62 2006 .A2 v. 33) deals with navigation and navigable water. Much of the federal legislation will be found there, including:
Safe Drinking Water Act - statutes and regulations on the EPA website
Clean Water Act - summary and links to statute on EPA website
Prevention of Pollution from Ships - U.S. Code, Title 33, Chapter 33
General Websites on Water Law
Federal Agency Websites on Water Law
Credits: Georgetown Law Library's Libguide on Water Law Resources.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
