Arrangements for water resources or irrigation governance designs from the colonial era to the reform order always cause controversies and problems. These problems are norm conflicts in governance of water resources, both vertically between Law 17 of 2019 on Water Resources with Article 33 (2) and (3) with the NRI Act 1945, and horizontally with the Act RI Number 5 of 1960 concerning Basic Regulations on Agrarian Principles. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to analyze, and discover the philosophy of corruption based on state loss; analyze legis ratios of governance of water resources in a historical perspective. This research uses normative legal research methods with various approaches, including the statute approach, historical approach and conceptual approach. The analytic technique of this research is using an investigation strategy. The results showed that Ratio legis of Law Number 17 of 2019 which refers to Article 33 paragraph (2) and paragraph (3) of the 1945 NRI Law.