Arid-Land Water Rights in the United States; The Colorado Water Right the California Water Right Evolution of Irrigation Water Rights in Interstate Streams (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ...controversies were to be decided in accord with the customs, laws, and decisions prevailing in the respective states and territories. This policy was confirmed by a decision in 1890, in which the court said: "The local custom is set forth.... to have consisted in the recognition and acknowledgment of 'the right to locate water rights, and to divert, appropriate and use the waters of flowing streams for purposes of irrigation, when such location, diversion and use does not conflict or interfere with rights vested and accrued prior thereto.' Thus, under the laws of Congress and the Territory (Dakota), and under the applicable custom, priority of possession gave priority of right."12 The final word in the recognition of the frontier doctrine of appropriation and of the authority of a state in its application to the use of irrigation waters was pronounced in 1907 by the United States Supreme Court, in Kansas v-Colorado.13 The court asserted that "each State has full jurisdiction over the lands within its borders, including the beds of streams and other waters. It may determine for itself whether the common-law rule in respect to riparian rights or that doctrine which obtains in the arid regions of the West of the appropriation of waters for the purposes of irrigation shall control. Congress cannot enforce either rule upon any State." It should be borne in mind, in connection with the evolution of the arid-land water right, that up to 1856, questions of the use of water in California concerned only the mining industry; and the locus of water rights, with few exceptions, was confined to the mineral lands of the public domain not legally open to occupation and settlement. The newly developed property right in natural ant; and the...