ABSTRACT
The environmental water managers (EWM) of the western USA are part of a larger set of legal reforms to recognise and protect legal rights to water for the environment, and enable the transfer of existing rights to water to instream uses. This chapter presents the findings of the case study, examining how the aquatic environment is constructed in water law and investigating the creation and operation of these EWMs. In the western USA each state has its own body of water laws created by a combination of statutory amendments to a common law prior-appropriation framework, and these water laws are all slightly different. There are two organisational forms of EWMs in the USA. First, in the Columbia and Colorado Basins each state government has an organisation legally recognised as responsible for holding instream flows. Second, non-governmental organization work in partnership with the state agencies to acquire instream flows.
