Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-11-02
LEGAL USE OF WATER.
Laws on Subject Published in Sin.
 gle Volume,

l Washington, Nov 2.-The Nation
 al conservation commission is com
 piling for publication in single vol
 ume all the laws and court decisions,
 both state and federal, which relate
 to the use of water in the United
 States. This manual will be of i'm
 mense practical value and it is some
 what remarkable, considering the lwide number of interests which are
 touched by these laws, that no such compilation has been made before
 this. With the constantly growing
 demand for inter state waterways
 the increasing utilization of water
 power for the development of cleo tricity, and the widening areas of
 semi-arid western plains that are
 being made arable through irrigation these laws at the present. time affect |the interests of a wide variety of in-
 dividuals and corporations, and in
 the immediate future the number
 whose business is directly touched will beyond doubt be greatly increas- 1 ed.
 The work which the national con lservation commission is doing along this line is extremely thorough and the compilation will be complete. It will include all state and national statutes and all court decisions which concern water rights and kindred questions on both navigable and non navigable streams and lakes. The citations will include all acts which relate to riparian rights, and public |usufruct of water, and all statutes which concern mills, pollution of water, interference with navigation or the use of streams for power, dam ming of streams, diverting stream, flow, and so on--in short, all acts which affect the use of waters and
 their private appropriation to power or other purposes. In the book will
 be included also some authoritative discussion of the principles involved
 in these laws.
 The national conservation com- mission in its endeavor to make the compilation absolutely complete and accurate has called upon the govern ors of all the states for assistance and the replies in every. instance have promised support. Considerably more than half the states have al- ready appointed state conservation commissions for the specific purpose |of cooperating with the national commission in it's work of gathering the material which will be embodied in the report to the president the first of the year. In the other states the state officials whose work most nearly touches this project are at work. A single volume containing allthe laws which bear upon the use of waters in the various parts of the country will be an exceedingly use full reference handbook. It holds pos abilities of an even greater useful ness in. that 1t will exhibit within Hints that make ready comparison possible. not only the general tenden- cies of the laws and decisions on this subject, but the discrepancies that exist between the regulations of diff feernt states.
 The fear is frequently expressed that the tendency towards monopoli- zation of water power, which has al- ready made very great progress in some parts of the country, will result in practically all of this extremely valuable natural resource passing from the people as a whole into the hands of comparatively few men, with resulting higher cost of water power and water developed electricity to consumers and tremendous ad- vantage to the few possessors. If this danger is justified by the present laws, it is matter of great import ance to make this fact apparent at once. For this purpose nothing could be more effective than such a .presen- tation of all the laws on the subject as that which tine commission Is pre- naring