Our work in Armenia involves reviewing contracts between the State and a couple of the largest water purveying companies in the world, Veolia and Suez, which are headquartered in France.

Interestingly, we have found that these French companies, through their subsidiaries Veolia Water North America and United Water, also have contracts in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Examples include Operation and Maintenance contracts between Veolia and the cities of Wilsonville, OR and Vancouver, WA, and contracts between United Water and Boise, ID.

Links to these companies can be found at www.veoliawaterna.com and www.unitedwater.com.

In the world of water law, we often receive calls from clients and potential clients that live many miles away from our Portland office, and sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest major airport. In many cases, a site visit to the client’s land is necessary to get a lay of the land, or a sense of the facts on the ground. But the reality is that a site visit isn’t always practical right away. In those cases, a resource like Google Earth can be invaluable. And when the land you are looking for is far away from any urban center, a little tool that we found at www.earthpoint.us is a great time saver. With Earth Point you can enter a Township and Range and it will fly you the appropriate place on Google Earth. There are also some other options on the site that look equally useful.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of teaching a Water Law Bootcamp for Water for Life. Over forty people attended at the Baker County Fairgrounds in Baker City Oregon. Unlike previous presentations, attendees focused their questions primarily on due diligence water rights review in real estate transactions and valuations of water rights when lending on water righted properties. Apparently in these economic times, realtors and lenders are giving much more scrutiny to what water rights exist on the property subject to a transaction.

Armenia’s Presidential election unrest may delay our next mission to assist the government in a review and updating of contracts between the State and the French contractors now purveying water to Yerevan and a few other cities in Armenia.

In preparing for this work, Katherine Thomas has found many cities in the West that also contract with American subsidiaries of these same French contractors. The world is small–or the French contractors are big!