Minecraft wiki entry for Unused_textures, associated text: Intended for use on water, with the game even containing unused code around the time of its introduction which would apply it to water,[28] it ultimately remained unused, with water maintaining a constant color regardless of biome at the time. This may or may not be due to water's texture being blue at the time, rather than the gray or white required for an effective tint, and as such multiplying it with a color would yield undesirable results (tinting already-blue water with another shade of blue would just make it much darker and unsightly); since water's texture was generated at runtime rather than defined as an image, actually making water's raw texture be gray would be a non-trivial task.