Beyond Adjudication

As adjudication extends into a new century, water managers must address new demands, including the water needs of endangered species and rivers themselves. Climate changes also put the utility of adjudication’s detailed measurements and allocations into question. Under a changing climate, the Southwest is expected to be warmer and drier. This chapter argues, however, that New Mexico has to account for future instream flows and existing climate change alterations of river flow regimes. The office of the state engineer will have to balance the new quantity demands of the Anthropocene and the warming climate with the already-difficult human demands by particular groups who want water quality to be a central focus in the future.

Local Settlements Connect What State Adjudication Severed

This chapter discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and unintended consequences of water settlements in New Mexico. The San Juan–Chama Project moved water (real and fictional) across basins and state borders and sparked adjudication in northern New Mexico, including the Aamodt and Abeyta. This chapter examines the fictional water connection between these two cases in a water transfer example, and it explores why adjudications morphed into out-of-court settlements. Settlements are not easy for all water users and the agencies tasked to meet their terms. These new agreements may rely on moving water that may not exist now or in the future. Furthermore, ongoing disputes regarding limitations on groundwater pumping from private wells may continue to haunt the office of the state engineer.

Roles of the Water Court and the State Engineer for water administration in Colorado

Colorado manages water using an administrative structure that is unique among the United States following the doctrine of prior appropriation: Water rights are adjudicated not by the State Engineer, but by Water Courts – separate from and operating in parallel to the criminal and civil courts – established specifically for this purpose. Fundamental to this system is the notion that water rights are property, with consequent protections under the US Constitution, but with the significant constraint that changes in water rights must not injure other water rights, either more senior or more junior. Population growth and climate change will certainly trigger changes in water administration, to be guided by the recent Colorado Water Plan. To provide the foundation necessary to appreciate these changes, this paper reviews the history of Colorado water administration and summarizes the complementary roles of the Water Courts and the State Engineer. Understanding water administration in Colorado depends on a firm grasp on how these two branches of state government formulate and implement water policy.

Cyriacus of Ancona and the Revival of Two Forgotten Ancient Personifications in the Rector's Palace of Dubrovnik*

Despite the growing interest of modern scholars in early-Renaissance civic architecture as the bearer of meaning, the public buildings of Dubrovnik (It. Ragusa; Lat. Ragusium) have received less attention than their due. This is all the more regrettable because when some of the city's monuments are seen in their appropriate historical perspective, they turn out to be more important than many scholars would have expected.My case in point is Dubrovnik's principal government building, the so-called Rector's Palace (Palatium regiminis, Knežev dvor, or the Palazzo de'Rettori) When the fortress-like structure, which had been built in the fourteenth century, was severely damaged in 1435 by a gunpowder explosion in the armory, the authorities immediately decided to erect a new palace. Its construction was entrusted to the state engineer Onofrio di Giordano della Cava of Naples, under whose direction it was virtually completed by 1452 — only to be severely damaged by another explosion of ammunition in 1463.