Opinion ID: 2589958
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: origin of the silver fork pipeline corporation and its use of water from the kentucky-utah mine

Text: ¶ 8 As grazing, timber, and mining in the canyon waned, Silver Fork eventually became a community for summer and year-round residents unrelated to any of these industries. As early as 1935, these residents permissively used water on demand emanating from the mine. In June 1935, Jesse Hulse and Ernest Nielson obtained title to approximately eighty acres of land in the Silver Fork area, northwest of the portal of the Kentucky-Utah Mine. They subsequently developed and sold this property to other persons for building summer homes and cabins. ¶ 9 Initially, Hulse and Nielson obtained water for their cabins by dipping it from a nearby creek, likely either Big Cottonwood Creek or Silver Fork Creek. In 1940, Hulse obtained authorization from the U.S. Forest Service to construct a ditch across approximately 400 feet of Forest Service land from the portal of the Kentucky-Utah Mine to his cabin. Hulse then obtained permission from owners of the mine to use their water and began digging the ditch. Beginning in 1941, all water emanating from the mine, except during winter months, was diverted through the ditch to Silver Fork. ¶ 10 In August 1945, Hulse and Neilson entered a contract with Salt Lake entitled Application for Water in which Hulse and Nielson agreed to construct and maintain the ditches through which they diverted water from the mine. Salt Lake agreed to sell water flowing in the ditch in exchange for $2 per cabin each year. Hulse and Neilson also agreed to replace the ditch with a pipeline and to return water not used for domestic and culinary purposes to the creek. ¶ 11 In 1950, Hulse formed the Silver Fork Pipeline Corporation, a non-profit corporation organized to construct, operate, and maintain the diversion works extending from within the mine to the subdivision on the former Hulse-Nielson property. Shares in the corporation are owned by individuals who own property in the Silver Fork area. [4] In that same year, SFPC contracted to pay Salt Lake $5 every year for each cabin located in the Silver Fork area which used water from the mine. By its terms, this agreement superseded the contract between Salt Lake and Hulse and Nielson. ¶ 12 In 1963, Salt Lake and SFPC amended this agreement in order to increase the water usage rate to $15 per year for each cabin. In 1965, Jesse Hulse relinquished all right, title, and claim in his improvements to the watercourse he constructed across Forest Service land to SFPC and canceled the permit issued to him in 1940. The Forest Service subsequently issued SFPC a permit authorizing the maintenance and use of the same watercourse between the mine and the Silver Fork area.