Joseph Dellapenna - Water Law

Water Law

Dellapenna is best known for his work on water law, ranging from the local to the national to the international levels. In addition to teaching a course of his own design on Managing the Water Environment, he has served as a consultant to governments on three continents regarding water law reform and on transboundary water disputes. He has also taught related courses on Environmental Law, International Trade and the Environment, Natural Resources Law, and Ocean and Coastal Law. He represented the Connecticut Water Works Association in City of Waterbury v. Town of Washington, 260 Conn. 506, 802 A.2d 1102 (2002), persuading the Connecticut Supreme Court to adopt a significant reinterpretation of Connecticut water law. He is also a major contributor to Waters and Water Rights (LexisNexis: Newark, NJ, multiple ed., various dates) the standard treatise of the topic, being responsible nearly the whole of volumes 1 and 3 and parts of volumes 2, 5, and 6, of the eight volume treatise. He has also written articles and books on water law, most notably “The Importance of Getting Names Right: The Myth of Markets for Water,” William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, vol. 2:317-77 (2000).

Dellapenna has been Director of the Model Water Code Project of the American Society of Civil Engineers since 1996 and served as Rapporteur of the Water Resources Committee of the International Law Association from 1996 to 2004. As Director of the Model Water Code Project, he led in the drafting of the Appropriative Rights Model Water Code and the Regulated Riparian Model Water Code, and supervised the preparation of Model Agreements for Sharing and Use of Transboundary Waters and Model Water Regulations for Administration and Trading in Humid Areas. As Rapporteur, he led the revision of the Helsinki Rules, the generally recognized summary of the customary international law on water resources, a revision that resulted in the International Law Association’s approval in August 2004 of the Berlin Rules on Water Resources to replace the Helsinki Rules. He has served as chair of the Water Regulatory Standards Committee of the Environment and Water Resources Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers since 1996 and as Vice-Chair of the Standards Development Council of the Institute since 2006. He also is co-chair of the Committee on International Environmental Law of the Section of International Law and Practice of the American Bar Association.