Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1130417
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 17:07:44+00:00

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248 APPROPRIATION OF WATER validity of such an appropriation.120 With respect to Corpus Christi, the court observed that: "A city may be reasonably expected to grow and develop over a period of years, and if it does so, its demands for water, as well as other necessaries, would necessarily increase." Hence, the city's failure to make immediate use of all water specified in a 1927 permit did not support a hypothesis of "wilful abandonment." Courts of several other States also have given sympathetic consideration to reasonable future needs of growing cities. Thus, in 1914, the Wyoming Supreme Court held that the City of Cheyenne was not limited in the amount of its appropriation to the needs of its citizens at the time its early rights were adjudicated. Furthermore, the city had the right to dispose of and apply its surplus water to a beneficial use even outside the city up to the amount of its appropriation, even though by so doing it left no water in the stream for subsequent appropriators.121 The Colorado Supreme Court recognized the right of Denver to appropriate water not only for immediate use but for the needs resulting from a normal increase in population within a reasonable time in the future, and to lease the use of water pending its need by the city.122 The Idaho Supreme Court has held to the same general effect. Furthermore, a municipality may purchase lands, if necessary, to acquire water for its municipal needs; but after purchase, it is not required to irrigate the lands to which water rights had attached, nor to cause them to be irrigated, in order to avoid loss of the water rights on a charge of abandonment. The power granted to a municipality to acquire and hold water for future needs is "an absolute necessity to the life and existence of a municipality."123 Salt Lake City, so the Supreme Court of Utah held, may acquire, develop, and manage such surplus water above its present requirements as is incident to needs reasonably anticipated in the future; it may construct and operate facilities necessary therefor; and it may sell and distribute the surplus outside its corporate limits pending the time the water is needed in the city, without regulation by the State Public Service Commission.124 120Lower Nueces River Water Supply Dist. v. Cartwright, 21A S. W. (2d) 199, 208 (Tex. Civ. App. 1954, error refused n.r.e.). 121 Holt v. Cheyenne, 22 Wyo. 212, 232, 137 Pac. 876 (1914). See Van Tassel Real Estate & Live Stock Co. v. Cheyenne, 49 Wyo. 333, 357-359, 54 Pac. (2d) 906 (1936). i22Denver v. Sheriff, 105 Colo. 193, 203-208, 96 Pac. (2d) 836 (1939). The city is protected by statute against the vesting of rights under such leasings that would defeat the city's right to make eventual use of the water: Colo. Laws 1931, ch. 172, Rev. Stat. § 139-79-1 (1963). l23Beus v. Soda Springs, 62Idaho 1, 6-7,107 Pac.(2d) 151 (1940). It is not against public policy for a city to appropriate more water than necessary to supply its immediate needs: Pocatello v. Murray, 206 Fed. 72, 80 (D. Idaho 1913), affirmed, 214 Fed. 214 (9th Cir. 1914). ™County Water System v. Salt Lake City, 3 Utah (2d) 46, 53-54, 278 Pac. (2d) 285 (1954).

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