Los Angeles herald., 1890-08-18
A Water Warning.
A New Invasion OF our Property
Rights.

EDITOR HERALD-The supreme court of
California has rendered some few import
| ant decisions in water cases. The state
law is explicit in its definition of rights,
and yet both supreme court and state
law are about to be set aside by power
which, if not checked in the beginning,
will lead to total destruction of our
present water system as relates to irriga-
ton of land. Since the first settlement
of Southern California by the old Fran
ciscan fathers, the right to fertilize the
soil by use of water has been recognized,
and those parties who used first, had
prior rights to any and all persons who
might come after.
Our state owns the running streams
the state law gives the settlers ON the
banks of the streams superior rights to
all others. Living on the banks, and
having used the waters of the stream,
gives the best water right known under
our laws. Next come settlers who live
at distance from the stream, but who
canal, and used it for term of five years
or more. The former are called riparian
appropriations, the latter appropriations
Now we will say, to illustrate, that
stream in the irrigating season,
from June LIST to September 18th,
carries five hundred inches.
There are neutrality-suspicious.
who divert and use four hundred and fifty
inches of water therefrom, and irrigate
eighteen hundred acres of land. There
are few oppropriators who use, on a
small tract Of two hundred acres, more
or less, the other fifty inches Thus
utilized, good crops OF fruit and grain
have been for years produced. During
period Of, say thirty years, at various
times squatters and spectators have
attempted to take some of this
water supply, and at cost of much time
and money. Suits have been instituted,
and carried on, and the WAGER rights
preserved. In some instances the shot
gun has been called into use. We will
digress a moment. A recent law was
passed whereby our large streams in
central and northern California could
be utilized in irrigation of large tracts of
valley land where thousands of acres
lie unproductive. district may be
formed and the board of supervisors
asked to grant permission to borrow
money to construct bitches or canals
by issuing bonds. The settlers vote
upon it and then proceed to elect officers
to carry on the work; the land in
the district SO mapped is held as secur-
ity for the bonds. Clearly this points to
new districts where people are too poor
to construct irrigation works. But what
say you, is the necessity in Los Angeles
county, where every inch of water is in
use at the present time? To return to
our former subject of present owner
shipper appropriation OF water from
stream: We have four hundred and
fifty inches irrigating eighteen hundred
acres, more or less, and two hundread
acres irrigated by fifty inches. Prosper
Gus, happy people are living under their
own vine and fig tree, with their pre-
scriptive rights to this water. Now it so
happens that the appropriations on the
two hundred acres have at various times
been assaulted by owners OF adjacent
lands to compel them to give up a por-
ton of the water. They have been sue
cessful in maintaining their rights in the
premises; but the new law gives the Gu
pidity of these outsiders a new stimu-
lus. They set to work with surveyors
and maps; they define district which
includes most of the land now irrigated
by our five hundred inches; they bring
in enough voters to out vote the old set
tiers. They get the board of supervi-
sors to "pass" upon the ordinance;
a day is set near at hand to vote upon its
adoption, and before the staid old set
tiers have time to take second breath,
votes have been cast, and their hard
earned and harder maintained water is
gone from them forever. Their five
hundred inches must now serve not two
thousand acres but iout thousand or
five thousand, as these spectators may
deem proper to name in the ordinance.
Do you see, my friends, where the
board OF supervisors, backed by the
Wright law, has state law and supreme