The Lamar register. [volume] (Lamar, Colo.) 1889-1952, 1911-10-11

Orado has invented cannot affect
us. We are entitled to have the
Arkansas flow as it always flowed,
use it up in Kansas that is no
concern of Colorado's."
Colorado fought the case des-
perately. The Legislature spent
the battle. When it was done the
supreme court announced its rul-
ing 1t occupies seventy pages in
the 206th volume of the supreme
court reports. but the gist of II
is this:
1--WE are satisfied that Colorado
has seriously diminished the wa
ter that used to reach Kansas. But
as between the states. we will not
employ the riparian doctrine in its
strictest, unvarying form. We will
determine what is just and wise.
We find that on the use of these
! waters Colorado has built up
cities and farming communities to
4 a point of benefit much overlapping
the injury to Kansas. We will not
set back that empire. Colorado has
not yet gone too far"
The material value of this decis-
ion to Colorado in dollars and cents
is difficult to estimate. but 1t ran
into the billions.
Since the decision of the Kan
s-Colorado case in 1909 the trou-
BILE remained in allegiance until last
yer. Then a company which owns
i two great abandoned bitches and
a beet sugar factory near Garden
City came into court on a new
theory. They come ON the prin-
eiple that they were the owners
of earlier bitches than those in
Colorado and that their early use
| of the water amounted to an APP
preparation of the water; that the
defendants were all junior to them
and that. as younger bitches. they
must allow the water of the Ar
kansas to flow into Kansas. Behind
this action. backing it and furnish
ing the funds. there is a band of
investors in Kansas lands. The
water they demand is identically
the same as that which Colorado
won from Kansas three years ago.
The defendants were the water
officials of Colorado and about
sixteen mutual farmers companies
in Colorado. These Colorado com
panies are not corporations in the
ordinary sense. They are coopera-
tive mutual companies in which
each water user owns share in
the ditch and is annually assessed
so many dollars to meet the ex-
penses of the year. II the state
government does not assume the ex-
penses of this suit they must be
met by what is practically house
to- o-house assessment made on the
farming population from Canon City
to the state line.
As the Kansas parties say in
| tnelr complaint, tnty are Seeking To
gain what they hoped that the Kan
sas-Colorado case would win for
them but did not. The gaining of
IL would wipe out OF existence viii
lagos and towns and erase from
the state tax rolls millions of
taxable property in the counties of
Fremont. Pueblo. and particularly
Otero. Bent and Prowers.
The situation in the north is
hardly less serious. The exhaus-
tion of available water in the
Greeley and Fort Collins area has
led to a project to carry water from
the Laramie river across the range
and into this rich territory. Wy
oming claims this water as her
own. partly on the ground that
Kansas took in the first Kansas
Colorado battle. and partly on the
theory that appropriations in Wyo-
ming are senior in time to those in
Colorado. The state of Wyoming
has impleaded Colorado in the su-
nrema court and made tho conn