Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1130217
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:43:23+00:00

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48 CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERCOURSE second during the period May 1 to September 30, inclusive. In Benson v. Cook and Terry v. Heppner, it was held that the waters flowing in the draws or coulees in litigation were diffused surface waters not subject to appropriation under the "dry draw law." Slough connected with watercourse.-It has long been recognized that a slough connected with a watercourse and supplied with water therefrom is a part of the watercourse. In California, where the doctrine of riparian rights is recognized and applied, lands contiguous to the slough have riparian rights in the waters of the river with which it is connected during such times as the water of that stream is present in the slough.135 It is not necessary that the water in a slough be flowing; riparian rights "exist in any body of water, whether flowing or not."136 In Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Company, so important in the riparian water law of California, a tract of about 18,000 acres of land extending along the San Joaquin River was intersected by 22 sloughs through which the river waters flowed out into the tract, the residue thereof eventually reaching the river.137 These sloughs had definite beginnings, definite channels with banks and bottoms, and a definite ending in Fresno Slough; and they regularly took water during certain seasons of the year from San Joaquin River. It was held that they were watercourses, and that the lands bordering them were riparian lands with rights to the use of the water of the river correlated with those of upper riparian owners on the main river. An early map showed the upper reaches of Warm Springs Creek in Idaho as a flat, boggy area and referred to it as Warm Springs Slough.138 The fact that these waters flowed through sloughs, said the supreme court, would not necessarily change the character of the watercourse nor render the waters not subject to appropriation. In another Idaho case, one point was whether Watson Slough was a natural watercourse, or merely a high-water channel for overflow waters of Snake River.139 It was a channel that left the main stream and returned to it about 8 miles below; and it was held to be a watercourse within accepted definitions thereof, even though the evidence conflicted as to whether only high water 135 Turner v. James Canal Co., 155 Cal. 82, 91, 99 Pac. 520 (1909). While the water is running into Fresno Slough from Kings River, the slough is a part of the river and the riparian needs of lands riparian to the slough are fixed by reference to the similar needs of other lands riparian to the river. Fresno Slough is also connected with San Joaquin River, and the same relationships between lands riparian to the slough and those riparian to San Joaquin River apply except when the waters of Kings River are flowing in the slough: Miller & Lux v. Enterprise Canal & Land Co., 169 Cal. 415, 420-421, 147 Pac. 567 (1915). 136 Turner v. James Canal Co., 155 Cal. 82, 87-88, 99 Pac. 520 (1909). 137 Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Co., 200 Cal. 81, 92, 252 Pac. 607 (1926). 138Bachman v. Reynolds In. Dist., 56 Idaho 507, 512, 55 Pac. (2d) 1314 (1936). 139Hutchinson v. Watson Slough Ditch Co., 16 Idaho 484, 488-489, 101 Pac, 1059 (1909).

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