Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1139098
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 08:43:01+00:00

Document:
716 valid local law, suited to the environment,26 and became the basis of the first State legislation authorizing the appropriation of water, en- acted in 1872.27 Appropriations of water under the 1872 statute were initiated by posting notices, and by recording the notices and com- mencing construction of works within prescribed periods of time-a procedure that had been developed in the mining camps. An act known as the Water Commission Act, passed in 1913 28 and effective December 19, 1914, established State administrative control over the appropriation of water other than percolating ground water, and pre- scribed a procedure for making appropriations which the California Supreme Court has held to be exclusive of any other method.29 This legislation was reenacted in 1943 as part of the Water Code.30 It was not until 1886, in the case of Lux v. Haggin*1 that the riparian doctrine became firmly established in California jurisprudence. The court held that the right of a riparian proprietor to the natural flow of a watercourse is inseparably annexed to the soil of the tract contiguous thereto, and passes with the land, not as an easement or appurtenance, but as a parcel; that use does not create the right, and that disuse can- not destroy it except as a result of prescription; and that the riparian owner in California is entitled to a reasonable use of the water for irrigation in relation to the reasonable needs of all other riparian pro- prietors on the same stream. Subsequent litigation over water rights, including conflicts between riparian and appropriative claims on the same stream system, has been extensive. The appropriator, as time went on, was held to an increasing measure of reasonable beneficial use as a necessary element of his water right, not only as against other appropriators, but also when a claim of prescriptive title was being asserted against a riparian owner.32 But until within the past quarter- century the converse was not true. That is, as stated by the supreme court in 1909,83 the limitation of a riparian owner to reasonable use of water applied only as between different riparian proprietors; as against an appropriator, "He is not limited by any measure of reasonableness." The public became deeply interested in the ever-recurrent conflict as "Stiles v. Laird, 5 Calif. 120, 122, 123, 63 Am. Dec. 110 (1855); Irwin v. Phillips, 5 Calif. 140, 145-147, 63 Am. Dec. 113 (1855); Tartar v. Spring Creek Water & Min. Co., 5 Calif. 395, 399 (1855). 27 Calif. Civ. Code, § 1410 et seq. 28 Calif. Stats. 1913, ch. 586. 29 Crane v. Stevinson, 5 Calif. (2d) 387, 398, 54 Pac. (2d) 1100 (1936). 80 Calif. Water Code, §§ 100 to 4407. 31 Lux v. Haggin, 69 Calif. 255, 390-409, 10 Pac. 674 (1886). 82 California Pastoral & Agricultural Co. v. Madera Canal & Irr. Co., 167 Calif. 78, 83-87, 138 Pac. 718 (1914). 88 Miller & Lux v. Madera Canal & Irr. Co., 155 Calif. 59, 64, 99 Pac. 502 (1907, 1909).

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