Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1130736
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 20:25:10+00:00

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ELEMENTS OF THE APPROPRIATIVE RIGHT 567 use. The latter corporation [mutual] is simply the agent of the appropriator to carry his water to where he makes the beneficial use."628 (4) In a rate-fixing case, the Colorado Supreme Court in effect took a mid- dle position on the matter of principal and agency. The court held that neither the company alone nor the consumers alone were appropriators in the strict sense of the term, inasmuch as their combined acts were necessary to consti- tute the appropriation and to keep it alive.629 Public agency. - Appropriative water rights of irrigation districts are gen- erally held by the organization and are appurtenant to the entire area included within the district boundaries. Some exceptions have occurred, for example, when the districts did not acquire title to all preexisting individual rights. These rights retained their priorities and their appurtenance to specific tracts of land. Water rights of districts other than the standard irrigation district-of which there are many kinds in the West-may be appurtenant to individual tracts, or to entire areas within the district boundaries, depending upon applicable State laws and the particular circumstances under which the rights were acquired. Municipalities are both formal and real appropriators of the water which they divert and supply to their inhabitants. Right of Consumer to Receive Water from the Distributing Agency Commercial company. -An owner of land under a commercial company canal can acquire no right to any part of the water carried by the canal without per- forming essential acts in acquiring the right-making application to the company for service, and applying the water to beneficial use.630 It is the duty of a common carrier to distribute the water only to applicants as they come.631 But the right to water once sold to an applicant "becomes a perpetual right subject to defeat only by failure to pay annual water rents and comply with the lawful requirements as to the conditions of the use."632 If the company is deemed to own the water right, a bona fide customer receives not only service, but an interest in the company's priority proportionate to the quantity of water beneficially used by him.633 If the customer is the real appropriator, he acquires by his relation to the company an easement in its irrigation system.634 Again, where the company is the real appropriator, water must be supplied to all lands adjacent to or within reach of the canal system without discrimination on payment of charges.635 6UIn re Walla Walla River, 141 Oreg. 492, 498, 16 Pac. (2d) 939 (1932). 629 Jefferson County v. Rocky Mountain Water Co., 102 Colo. 351, 356, 361, 79 Pac. (2d) 373(1938). 630Stare v. Laramie Rivers Co., 59 Wyo. 9, 45-46, 136 Pac. (2d) 487 (1943). 631 Id. at 44. 632Farmers' Co-op. Ditch Co. v. Riverside In. Dist., 14 Idaho 450, 458-459, 94 Pac. 761 (1908). 633Reno Power, Light & Water Co. v. Public Serv. Comm'n, 300 Fed. 645, 648, 649 (D. Nev. 1921). 634Bolles v. Pecos Irr. Co., 23 N. Mex. 32, 41, 167 Pac. 280 (1917); Murp/ry v. Ken, 296 Fed. 536, 546-549 (D. N. Mex. 1923), affirmed, 5 Fed. (2d) 908 (8th Cir. 1925). 635In re Walla Walla River, 141 Oreg. 492, 496-497, 16 Pac. (2d) 939 (1932).

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