Opinion ID: 1170215
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 28

Heading: Determination of Needs Satisfiable by Pueblo Right

Text: (9) The pueblo right gives the city holding it a paramount claim to particular waters only to the extent that they are required for satisfying its municipal needs and those of its inhabitants. It thus insures a water supply for an expanding city (see City of Los Angeles v. Pomeroy, supra, [124 Cal.] at 649) with a minimum of waste by leaving the water accessible to others until such time as the city needs it.  ( City of L.A. v. City of Glendale, supra, 23 Cal.2d at p. 75.) [43] (Italics added.) (10) Defendants contend, and the trial court found, that none of the waters of the Los Angeles River and none of the ground waters of the ULARA are required to meet plaintiff's needs because plaintiff's total water supply exceeds its water needs, and it is estimated that until at least the year 2020, the total water supply of the plaintiff will continue to exceed its water needs. This finding is supported by a graph in evidence depicting plaintiff's past and projected population, water consumption, and water supply available from local wells, the Owens aqueduct, and the two sources from which water is distributed to plaintiff by the Metropolitan Water District, (1) the Colorado River, and (2) the State Water Project bringing water from Northern California. The graph shows that the water available to plaintiff from all these sources will exceed its consumption in the year 2020 based on a projected population of four million. However, the graph also shows that plaintiff's consumption has exceeded its local well supply since before 1920 and that such consumption has exceeded the sum of the local well supply and the Owens aqueduct supply since about 1950. Defendants' theory is that so long as plaintiff has sufficient water from any source to meet its requirements, it has no needs to be satisfied under the pueblo right. They rely on comments which this court made in City of L.A. v. City of Glendale, supra, 23 Cal.2d at pages 78-79, in rejecting an offer of proof that the supply of Owens water from the aqueduct was sufficient to meet plaintiff's current and future needs. The court stated that the evidence was irrelevant to the quiet title action then before the court which dealt only with `priority of right, and not the quantity of water to be taken....' [Citation.] (23 Cal.2d at p. 79) but commented that the offered evidence would have been pertinent to the question whether an injunction should issue against the defendants and if received for the purpose intended by the defendants, would have required the court to determine the amount of water necessary, and the amount available, for the plaintiff's present and future needs. (23 Cal.2d at p. 78.) Defendants also rely on the statement in Cuyamaca Water Co. v. Superior Court (1924) 193 Cal. 584, 588 [226 P. 604, 33 A.L.R. 1316], that the amount of water needed for the purpose of priority under the pueblo right is necessarily uncertain and conjectural and dependent upon conditions such as rainfall and other established sources of supply. To confine the operation of the pueblo right to situations of physical shortage, as urged by defendants, would deprive the pueblo right of all realistic meaning and would penalize the holder of such a right for developing more remote sources of supply. Water imported from greater distances costs more; thus, MWD water is more expensive for plaintiff than is Owens water, which in turn is more expensive than plaintiff's native local supply. [44] Defendants' theory of need would give a city having a pueblo right an incentive to restrain and minimize its importation of water in order to entitle it to take advantage of its priority to less expensive local water. Such a theory would be contrary to the policy inherent in the water law of this state to utilize all water available. ( Allen v. California Water & Tel. Co. (1946) 29 Cal.2d 466, 488 [176 P.2d 8].) In City of Los Angeles v. Hunter, supra, 156 Cal. at page 609, this court approved a judgment declaring plaintiff's pueblo right and enjoining the defendants from diverting water from the river at any time when the [plaintiff] city was taking the entire surface flow for the purposes for which the city and its inhabitants required the water. In other words, water which was in fact used for pueblo right purposes was deemed to be needed for those purposes. The added fact, not present in Hunter, that plaintiff has a legal right to purchase more expensive water from the MWD does not cancel its need for the water that it actually uses for municipal purposes and the needs of its inhabitants. (See City of Pasadena v. City of Alhambra, supra, 33 Cal.2d at p. 934.) The previously quoted statements from Glendale and Cuyamaca relied upon by defendants are not inconsistent with these conclusions. A prediction of whether or when a city will need the water to which the pueblo right attaches does, as those statements indicate, depend on the existence of alternative sources of supply, but it also must take into account the relative costs of those alternative sources. If the city demonstrates an ability and intention to apply the water to reasonable beneficial uses in satisfaction of its municipal needs and the needs of its inhabitants, it thereby demonstrates the need requisite for priority to the water under the pueblo right. [45]