ASU Law’s Morrison Prize honors professor for water rights research

An article advocating for a novel approach to water rights conflicts has been awarded the Morrison Prize by the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. 

Karrigan Börk, acting professor of law at the University of California, Davis School of Law, was awarded the prestigious honor for his article “Water Right Exactions,” published in 2023 in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. 

“The past winners are outstanding environmental scholars, and I’m humbled to receive the award,” Börk said. “The Morrison Prize and the sustainability conference play a vital role in bringing attention to our environmental challenges, and I hope that the award will bring more attention to the need to balance water use with the impacts of its withdrawal on rivers and their ecosystems. I’m grateful to the prize selection panel for the award and to the conference organizers for building this scholarly community.”

Börk’s article describes an inventive potential means of mitigating current water rights issues in the U.S.: the use of an exactions framework analogous to those long used by local governments in the land-use planning context. Börk suggests that state agencies could use an exactions model to collect funds and in-kind contributions to help offset the social costs of water withdrawals.