Elizabeth P. Ewens

Water Resources Litigation & Water Rights Law

Sacramento

Elizabeth P. Ewens' legal career began in 1994 with a balanced focus on employment litigation and real property law. However, a move back to California from Colorado in 2000 presented her with an opportunity to specialize in Western water law, a field she has dedicated herself to ever since.

"I was a history major at UC Berkeley and still have a history bug. I was drawn to California and Western water law because water rights here developed directly from the settlement of the western United States and our current laws are anchored in that history," Ewens said. "New, emerging changes in water law are also reflective of our growing populations, changes in land use, societal priorities, climate change and increasing competing demands on this limited resource."

One of her recent matters included being at the forefront of significant legal proceedings, such as the Las Posas Valley adjudication, the first post-Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) groundwater adjudication.

Ewens represented the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency, an independent special district created by the California Legislature to manage groundwater resources within Ventura County, in this comprehensive groundwater adjudication brought by the Las Posas Valley Water Rights Coalition to determine water rights and pumping allocations from the basin.

"The adjudication impacts both local groundwater management and water rights, but also is testing the intersection between traditional water rights law and new regulation of groundwater as well as the intersection between the court's continued jurisdiction, local management efforts and state oversight under SGMA," Ewens explained. "The judgment entered by the court in 2023 is the result of a groundbreaking comprehensive settlement to address these often-competing interests."

She also represented San Luis Obispo County and the San Luis Obispo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District in a multi-phase trial is about quiet title claims to the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin asserted by over 700 plaintiffs, and the competing appropriative and prescriptive rights of public water suppliers to groundwater resources within the basin.

The county prevailed on its prescriptive right claims in a jury trial in 2018, and substantially prevailed against competing self-help claims in 2024.

Reflecting on both matters, Ewens said: "In both the Las Posas adjudication and the County of San Luis Obispo/Steinbeck litigation, everything in these cases was complex. We were dealing with hundreds of parties represented by multiple counsel, and the cases were intricate and demanding from the perspective of my role as a litigator and advocate and given the technical nature of the hydrology issues and the application of groundbreaking law."