University of Washington School of Law UW Law Digital Commons Articles Faculty Publications 1971 The Area of Origin and a Columbia River Diversion Ralph W. Johnson University of Washington School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles Part of the Water Law Commons Recommended Citation Ralph W. Johnson, The Area of Origin and a Columbia River Diversion, 46 Wash. L. Rev. 245 (1971), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/491 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at UW Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of UW Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE AREA OF ORIGIN AND A COLUMBIA RIVER DIVERSIONt Ralph W. Johnson* In 1968 Congress declared a ten-year moratorium on any study of diversion of Columbia River water to the Southwest.' One of the reasons for the moratorium was to give residents of the Pacific North- west time to analyze their region's water needs to determine if "sur- plus" waters are available for export, and to establish, in a broader sense, a regional policy towards diversion proposals. This article as- sumes a neutral stance2 towards the ultimate issue of diversion and attempts only to analyze the problem of protecting the area of origin in the event of a Columbia River to Southwest interbasin water trans- fer t Part of the research on this article was performed under a grant from the Washington Water Research Center.