Opinion ID: 1170215
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 25

Heading: Plaintiff's Reliance on Pueblo Right

Text: (6) The doctrine of stare decisis applies with special force to rules of property on which those engaged in business transactions have relied in gauging the probable returns on their acquisitions and investments. (See Abbott v. City of Los Angeles (1958) 50 Cal.2d 438, 456-457 [326 P.2d 484].) The pueblo water right has been declared to be such a rule of property. ( City of San Diego v. Cuyamaca Water Co., supra, 209 Cal. at p. 122.) In considering defendants' ardent contention that the pueblo right should be repudiated, we now examine the nature and extent of plaintiff's reliance on the pueblo right in the development of its water supply and the practical consequences that would attend its abandonment. The Los Angeles River provided the sole water supply for the Pueblo of Los Angeles and its successor city, plaintiff, from the founding of the pueblo in 1781 through the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. During the latter part of this period plaintiff entered an era of rapid growth. Its population was 11,183 in 1880, 50,395 in 1890, 102,479 in 1900, and 318,198 in 1910. This growth was accompanied by concern over plaintiff's future water supply. One response by plaintiff to this concern was to obtain judgments declaring and enforcing its claim to a paramount pueblo right to use the water of the river to the extent of its needs. On the basis of serious water deficits during heat waves in the summers of 1904 and 1905, plaintiff obtained an injunction in City of Los Angeles v. Buffington, decided with the companion case of City of Los Angeles v. Hunter (1909) supra, 156 Cal. 603, prohibiting numerous landowners in the southeastern San Fernando Valley from extracting or diverting water at any time that plaintiff was consuming the entire flow for its municipal supply. In addition to his injunction, plaintiff obtained judgments declaring the paramountcy of the pueblo water right against owners of land along or near the river bed in the southern San Fernando Valley [23] not only in the reported cases of City of Los Angeles v. Hunter, supra, 156 Cal. 603; City of Los Angeles v. Los Angeles Farming & Milling Co. (1907) 150 Cal. 647 [89 P. 615]; id. (1908) 152 Cal. 645 [93 P. 869, 1135], writ of error dism. 217 U.S. 217 [54 L.Ed. 736, 30 S.Ct. 452], [24] but also in three superior court cases set forth in exhibits in the present record. [25] The other response to the increasing water shortage was to obtain new sources of water. Minor additions to plaintiff's Los Angeles River supply were made after 1910 by the drilling of wells in the southern part of the city and the acquisition of private water systems. [26] In 1907 plaintiff commenced work on its Los Angeles Aqueduct to import large quantities of water from the Owens River in Inyo County over 200 miles away. The first Owens water reached the San Fernando Valley on November 5, 1913, and was all delivered into plaintiff's distribution mains south of the Santa Monica Mountains. In May 1915 plaintiff annexed almost all of the San Fernando Valley thus increasing the area of plaintiff's territory from 115 to 285 square miles. In the same month plaintiff commenced delivery of Owens water to the annexed territory primarily for irrigation purposes. These events had two effects on the quantity of water available from the Los Angeles River and its underground supply in the ULARA: (1) The introduction of Owens water into plaintiff's distribution system reduced the quantity of ground water plaintiff was required to draw from the ULARA and (2) much of the Owens water used for irrigation in the San Fernando Valley was returned underground and was mingled with and substantially increased the ULARA's ground supply. In the water year 1913-1914, despite the beginning inflow of Owens water, plaintiff drew what was then a record 62,800 acre feet of ground water from the ULARA. This amounted to almost the entire safe yield of the ULARA [27] and probably equalled or exceeded the safe yield of the San Fernando subarea. [28] The following year. 1914-1915, plaintiff's ULARA extractions dipped to 49,630 acre feet and did not again reach an annual rate above the 1913-1914 figure until 1923-1924. But even this decrease in extractions does not reflect the full reduction effected by the new aqueduct in plaintiff's dependence on the native underground supply. In 1913-1914, the year of maximum extractions, plaintiff was already using Owens water in substantial amounts. [29] and the volume of imported water increased drastically during the ensuing five years. [30] Although some of the imported water was used for irrigation, it is clear that much of it was needed, and used, for the domestic needs of plaintiff's growing population, [31] thus offsetting that population's dependence on the native supply. The imported Owens water not only replaced water that plaintiff would otherwise have drawn from the ULARA's native underground supply but it also augmented that supply through returns from imported water used for irrigation, thus proportionately decreasing the part of plaintiff's extractions constituting a drain on the native supply. The extent of this augmentation was substantial. About 27 percent of the Owens water delivered to customers in the San Fernando Valley was returned to the underground reservoir. [32] The proportion of the underground supply attributable to imported (as distinct from native) water is a more variable figure depending on such factors as the quantity of imported water used in the ULARA and changes on the land surface affecting the extent to which the native rain and surface runoff can penetrate beneath the ground. Although in 1955, when this action was commenced, imported water provided over 40 percent of the safe yield of the ULARA, the average contribution of imported water to safe yield from 1928 to 1940 was probably somewhat less than 30 percent. [33] These two responses by plaintiff to its acute water shortage of the 1900's  obtaining judicial protection of its pueblo water right and importing water from the Owens River  were interrelated. Plaintiff could not properly spend its municipal funds to import water from a great distance simply to replace a cheaper local supply and make the replaced water available for appropriation by strangers. Yet without the pueblo right that would be the effect of plaintiff's actions with respect to the Owens water. If plaintiff had refrained from adding Owens water to the ULARA's underground supply and had continued to draw on that supply for substantially all of its domestic needs, it is probable that very little water would have been available for defendants at least in the San Fernando subarea. [34] Plaintiff could have put the subarea's safe yield to beneficial use and could thus have justified its appropriation long before any significant quantities were appropriated by defendants. [35] If prior riparian or overlying rights were asserted, plaintiff might have purchased or condemned such rights for relatively small sums [36] or could have acquired them by prescription ( City of Pasadena v. City of Alhambra, supra, 33 Cal.2d 908, 926-927; Moore v. Cal. Oregon Power Co. (1943) 22 Cal.2d 725, 735 [140 P.2d 798]; Hudson v. Dailey (1909) 156 Cal. 617, 629-630 [105 P. 748]). The importation of Owens water, however, created a surplus of water enabling others to make competing appropriations from the underground supply. In importing the water, plaintiff relied on the pueblo right to retain priority in its original native supply once this surplus was exhausted. (See City of L.A. v. City of Glendale, supra, 23 Cal.2d 68, 75, 79-80.) Another course that plaintiff might have followed in the absence of a pueblo water right would have been to proceed as it did with the annexation of the San Fernando Valley and the importation of Owens water into the annexed territory as well as other parts of the city and concurrently to sponsor legislation to assure preservation of its prior rights in the cheaper local supply when its needs should outgrow the Owens-created surplus. Such legislation would have been in accord with the policies of subsequent California enactments providing such protection to foresighted municipalities which develop water resources for their future needs. [37] (See Hutchins, Pueblo Water Rights in the West (1960) 38 Texas L.Rev. 748, 756.)