Community acequias and the pueblo water right: what survived of Spanish and Mexican water law in the United States

Two Spanish-Mexican water institutions outlived the cession of 1848 into American law, and the standard United States treatise on western water rights shows how unevenly. New Mexico's community acequias were carried into territorial statute and are governed by it still. The pueblo water right, by which American cities claimed the water of the Spanish pueblos they succeeded, rests on meagre Spanish authority and a judicial presumption - and irrigation in New Mexico is older than Spain there.