Opinion ID: 1309497
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Riparian Rights and the Severance Doctrine

Text: We next consider the Board's contention that Congress affirmatively relinquished all proprietary claims to the waters of the West through the enactment of the Mining Acts of 1866 and 1870 and the Desert Land Act of 1877. The contention is rooted in events and laws which date from California's admission to the Union. In 1850, California was admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever. (9 Stat. 452.) Although section 3 of the act of admission expressly reserved to the United States all public lands within California, no express provision was made with respect to the waters in California's lakes, streams and rivers. (See California v. United States, supra, 438 U.S. at p. 654 [57 L.Ed.2d at p. 1025].) (10) Under the so-called equal footing doctrine, however, the United States Supreme Court recognized that new states were entitled to plenary control of the water within their territory on an equal footing with the original thirteen states. (See Kansas v. Colorado (1907) 206 U.S. 46, 92-95 [51 L.Ed. 956, 972-974, 27 S.Ct. 655]; United States v. Rio Grande Dam & Irrig. Co., supra, 174 U.S. at pp. 702-703, 709 [43 L.Ed. at pp. 1141, 1143-1144].) [10] Almost simultaneously with California's admission to the Union, there occurred an event of nearly equal significance  the discovery of gold. As miners and settlers streamed into California, they took what water they needed to work their mines and farms by diverting it from the natural watercourses. From this process arose the local priority rule of first in time, first in right, or prior appropriation. (See People v. Shirakow, supra, 26 Cal.3d at pp. 306-307.) The doctrine of prior appropriation sharply differed from the common law system of riparianism which had obtained in the East and which automatically entitled the owner of land bordering a watercourse to rights in the water. As settlement of the West proceeded apace, two related and troubling issues remained unresolved: the rights of riparian owners versus appropriators, and the interests of the federal government in relation to private claimants. Although this court had approved and applied the doctrine of prior appropriation between private claimants at an early date (see Irwin v. Phillips (1855) 5 Cal. 140), our early decisions also recognized the potentially superior title of the federal government (see, e.g., Kidd v. Laird (1863) 15 Cal. 161, 181; Boggs v. Merced Mining Co. (1859) 14 Cal. 279, 374-375). With the enactment of the Homestead Act of 1862, which established formal procedures for the acquisition of federal lands, fears intensified that the rights of prior appropriators could be defeated by the superior riparian rights of the federal government, or of federal patentees. (See Note, Federal-State Conflicts Over the Control of Western Waters (1960) 60 Colum. L.Rev. 967, 971.) The Mining Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 253, ch. 262; 43 U.S.C. § 661) was intended to alleviate these concerns by authorizing miners to explore and occupy the public lands, and by expressly recognizing those rights to the use of water on public lands that had previously been recognized by state law. [11] An amendment in 1870 provided expressly that all patents issued thereafter would be subject to the water rights recognized by the Mining Act of 1866 (16 Stat. 218, ch. 235; 43 U.S.C. § 661.) [12] Together, these acts represented federal confirmation of the validity of water appropriations which were recognized under state and local law. Moving from the protection of miners' claims to the problem of settlement and reclamation of the arid lands of the West, Congress passed the Desert Land Act of 1877 (19 Stat. 377, ch. 107; 43 U.S.C. §§ 321-323.) [13] That act provided for the sale of desert land to any settler intending to reclaim the land by irrigation, with the following important proviso: ... [p]rovided, however, that the right to the use of water by the person so conducting the same, on or to any tract of desert land... shall depend upon bona fide appropriation; and such right shall not exceed the amount of water actually appropriated, and necessarily used for the purpose of irrigation and reclamation; and all surplus water over and above such actual appropriation and use, together with the water of all lakes, rivers and other sources of water supply upon the public lands and not navigable, shall remain and be held free for the appropriation and use of the public for irrigation, mining, and manufacturing purposes, subject to existing rights. (43 U.S.C. § 321 (1976).) On its face, the Desert Land Act simply made the appropriation doctrine generally applicable to the waters of the West, limited the settlers' water rights to that which they had actually appropriated and used, and declared all surplus water to be free for appropriation by the public. (See Trelease, Federal-State Relations In Water Law (1971) at p. 147d.) The act would subsequently be accorded much greater significance by the state and federal courts, however, initially in the context of disputes between riparians and appropriators, later in cases involving the states and the federal government. In resolving these disputes, the various courts relied on differing theories as to the nature of the federal government's original proprietary interest in the waters of the West and the origin of state control over these waters. Although well over a century old, these debates provide live legal ammunition to both sides of the current dispute over the waters of Hallett Creek. The theoretical, though not the chronological, starting point of the controversy may be conveniently placed at Lux v. Haggin (1886) 69 Cal. 255 [10 P. 674], widely recognized as the landmark decision holding that California adopted the riparian system of water rights when it received the common law in 1850. California thus became a dual water rights state, recognizing both riparian and appropriative rights. (See Hutchins, supra, at pp. 52-55.) Lux involved a dispute between riparian owners and appropriators of the waters of the Kern River. In determining that both riparian and appropriative rights exist in California, the court reasoned that although the United States had retained title to the public lands and waters of the West, sovereignty had passed to the states as they were formed. Thus the states possessed the power to determine the rights that attached to federal lands. (69 Cal. at pp. 335-336.) Since California, by adopting the common law, had automatically recognized riparian rights, the court concluded that the federal government held riparian rights under state law as owner of the public lands, and that transfers to federal patentees carried with them riparian rights. A grant of public land of the United States carries with it the common-law [riparian] rights to an innavigable stream thereon.... ( Id. at p. 336.) (Italics omitted) Of course, the Lux court recognized that such federal conveyances were subject to any reserved federal rights, as well as any private appropriations of water which the United States had licensed ( id. at pp. 338-339) or, as a later court put it, consented to pursuant to the Acts of 1866, 1870 and 1877. ( Palmer v. Railroad Commission (1914) 167 Cal. 163, 168-169 [138 P. 997].) This concept of the nature of state sovereignty and of federal water rights became known as the California doctrine. (See Note, supra, 60 Colum. L.Rev. at pp. 972-973.) Countervailing theories of federal and state water rights developed in other western states, however, where California's dual model of coexisting riparian and appropriative rights was rejected in favor of a unitary system of prior appropriation. The Oregon courts, for example, agreed with California that the federal government originally held riparian rights to the waters of the public domain and that these rights survived the formation of the western states. The Oregon courts, however, construed the Desert Land Act as having severed or effected a reservation of the federal government's water rights, so that a federal patent conveyed rights only to land and not to water. Under the so-called Oregon doctrine, moreover, the Desert Land Act was construed as having established a uniform rule of appropriative rights in the western states. (The seminal Oregon decision is Hough v. Porter (1909) 51 Ore. 382 [98 P. 1083, 1091-1092].) [14] The state courts continued to weave their separate theoretical tapestries for several decades. California continued to adhere to the theory that a federal patent conveyed to the patentee the riparian rights of the United States, subject to the rights of prior appropriators. (See, e.g., Palmer v. Railroad Commission, supra, 167 Cal. at pp. 168-169 [The United States, with respect to the lands which it owns in the state, is a riparian proprietor as to the streams running through such lands.... [A] grant of its lands by the United States to a private person ... would carry with it the riparian rights pertaining to that land ...]; see also, Duckworth v. Watsonville Water etc. Co. (1915) 170 Cal. 425, 431-432 [150 P. 58]; Canal & Irrigation Co. v. Worsick (1922) 187 Cal. 674, 686, 690 [203 P. 999].) Indeed, in Worsick this court expressly rejected Oregon's view that the Desert Land Act had severed the United States riparian rights from the land itself. (187 Cal. at p. 690.) Other California decisions, however, suggested that the federal government might not hold riparian rights under California law. (See, e.g., McKinley Bros. v. McCauley (1932) 215 Cal. 229, 231 [9 P.2d 298] [[R]iparian rights do not attach to lands held by the government until such land has been transmitted to private ownership.]; accord, Rindge v. Crags Land Co. (1922) 56 Cal. App. 247, 252 [205 P. 36].) Finally, in 1935, the United States Supreme Court resolved the doctrinal debate, holding that a federal patent of desert land did not automatically convey federal riparian rights. In California-Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co. (1935) 295 U.S. 142 [79 L.Ed. 1356, 55 S.Ct. 725], a landowner whose title derived from a federal homestead patent issued in 1885 claimed the patent carried with it the common law riparian rights of the federal government. The Supreme Court, in considering the issue, reviewed the now familiar history of water law in the West, beginning with the informal evolution of appropriative rights, through the adoption of various state law systems during the federal period of silent acquiescence, and culminating finally with Congressional enactment of the Mining Acts of 1866 and 1870 and the Desert Land Act of 1877. (295 U.S. at pp. 154-158 [79 L.Ed. at pp. 1359-1361].) Focusing primarily on the Desert Land Act, particularly the clause declaring all surplus water to be free for the appropriation and use of the public, the Supreme Court concluded: If this language is to be given its natural meaning ... it effected a severance of all waters upon the public domain, not theretofore appropriated, from the land itself. From that premise, it follows that a patent issued thereafter for lands in a desert-land state or territory ... carried with it, of its own force, no common law right to the water flowing through or bordering upon the lands conveyed. (295 U.S. at p. 158 [79 L.Ed. at pp. 1361-1362], italics added.) Thus, the United States Supreme Court essentially opted for the Oregon doctrine, concluding that the Desert Land Act had severed the waters of the public domain from the soil, so that a federal patent conveyed rights to land but not to water. Significantly, however, the high court rejected Oregon's view that the Desert Land Act had imposed a uniform rule of appropriation, holding instead that the act recognized each state's power to determine for itself to what extent the rule of appropriation or the common-law rule in respect of riparian rights should obtain. (295 U.S. at p. 164 [79 L.Ed. at p. 1364].) (7c) Based on the foregoing state and federal authorities, each party to the current dispute attempts to demonstrate conclusively that the federal government either has (the Board) or has not (the United States) expressly relinquished all claims to riparian rights under state law. The United States, embracing the California doctrine, argues as follows: This court's holding that a federal patent conveyed riparian rights to federal patentees ( Lux v. Haggin, supra, 69 Cal. at p. 336) necessarily recognized the existence of riparian rights in federal lands. The Desert Land Act, with respect to the public domain lands where it applied, merely subordinated the common law riparian rights of the United States to the vested rights of prior appropriators already recognized under state law ( Palmer v. Railroad Commission, supra, 167 Cal. at p. 168), but did not terminate the federal government's riparian rights altogether. The Board, on the other hand, asserts a modernized version of the Oregon doctrine: The reason that a federal patent conveyed no water rights to the patentee ( California-Oregon Power, supra, 295 U.S. at p. 158 [79 L.Ed. at p. 1361]), the Board argues, is that Congress in enacting the Desert Land Act affirmatively severed or relinquished all proprietary claims to the western waters. Therefore, whatever riparian water rights in federal lands were recognized in Lux v. Haggin, supra, 69 Cal. 255, were effectively terminated by that act. None of the cited decisions is dispositive of the issue before us. Each considered the question of federal water rights solely to evaluate the derivative claims of federal patentees; none addressed a water claim asserted by the federal government itself. The California-Oregon Power court, supra, 295 U.S. 142, in rejecting the view that a federal patent transferred riparian rights to the patentee and holding instead that Congress had severed the water from the land which it conveyed, did not state  or even suggest  that the United States had thereby relinquished all water rights in the land which it retained. Indeed, had that been Congress's intent, it is reasonable to assume that that is precisely what Congress would have said, and what the United States Supreme Court would have held. Nothing in California-Oregon Power, supra, 295 U.S. 142, in the Desert Land Act, or in any of our early decisions construing that act, undermines the principle, uniformly recognized in Lux and its progeny, that riparian rights exist in federal lands located in California as surely as they inhere in private lands. (See Lux v. Haggin, supra, 69 Cal. at p. 335-336; Palmer v. Railroad Commission, supra, 167 Cal. at pp. 168-169.) We have never in California predicated the recognition of riparian water rights on the identity of the riparian owner, and we perceive no principled reason to do so now. The Board's reliance on dictum in McKinley Bros. v. McCauley, supra , to the effect that riparian rights do not attach to lands held by the government until such land has been transmitted to private ownership, does not establish otherwise. (215 Cal. at p. 231.) The dispute in that case was between a prior appropriator and a subsequent patentee of federal land, and the clear purpose of the quoted statement was to indicate that the patentee's priority did not accrue, or attach, against prior appropriators until the patent issued. (6b) Accordingly, we conclude that under California law riparian water rights exist on federal lands located within the State of California.