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Abstract We introduce a new concept of the local flux conservation and investigate its role in the coupled flow and transports. We demonstrate how the proposed concept of the locally conservative flux can play a crucial role in obtaining the$$L^2$$ $L^2$norm stability of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element scheme for the transport in the coupled system with flow. In particular, the lowest order discontinuous Galerkin finite element for the transport is shown to inherit the positivity and maximum principle when the locally conservative flux is used, which has been elusive for many years in literature. The theoretical results established in this paper are based on the equivalence between Lesaint-Raviart discontinuous Galerkin scheme and Brezzi-Marini-Süli discontinuous Galerkin scheme for the linear hyperbolic system as well as the relationship between the Lesaint-Raviart discontinuous Galerkin scheme and the characteristic method along the streamline. Sample numerical experiments have then been performed to justify our theoretical findings.