Opinion ID: 2590136
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Equitable Apportionment After City of San Fernando

Text: Respondents claim that after City of San Fernando, supra, 14 Cal.3d 199, 123 Cal.Rptr. 1, 537 P.2d 1250, and relying on the dicta stated in footnote 61 on pages 265-266 of that case, courts approved the use of equitable apportionment as the basis to allocate water among users in an overdraft basin. But the cases on which respondents rely do not support the contention. For example, in Hi-Desert County Water Dist, the Court of Appeal stated: Left unresolved in [ City of ] Pasadena, however, was whether by continuing to pump, an overlying user in an overdrafted basin retained its original overlying rights or obtained new ones by prescription. [Citations.] In 1975, in its most comprehensive statement of water law, our Supreme Court in [ City of San Fernando, supra, 14 Cal.3d 199, 123 Cal.Rptr. 1, 537 P.2d 1250] finally clarified the proposition that overlying owners `retain their rights [to nonsurplus water without judicial assistance] by using them.' [Citation.] ( Hi-Desert County Water Dist, supra, 23 Cal.App.4th at p. 1731, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d 909.) As against potential appropriators, the court noted that the five-year period for establishing prescriptive rights to nonsurplus water may be interrupted by the overlying owners' pumping of their nonsurplus water. ( Ibid. ) The court also observed that City of San Fernando rejected a mechanical application of the mutual prescription doctrine after noting it often fails to lead to an equitable water apportionment according to need. ( Hi-Desert County Water Dist, supra, 23 Cal.App.4th at p. 1734, 28 Cal. Rptr.2d 909.) As Hi-Desert County Water Dist observed, City of San Fernando required courts to consider many more factors than the amount the parties pumped during the prescriptive period in order to make a truly equitable apportionment. ( Hi-Desert County Water Dist, supra, 23 Cal.App.4th at p. 1734, fn. 11, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d 909.) In Wright, overlying owners in a groundwater basin sued to determine relative water rights in that basin. The Court of Appeal found the trial court erred in holding that a water district's appropriative rights had a higher priority than the overlying owners' unexercised rights. ( Wright, supra, 174 Cal.App.3d at pp. 78, 82, 219 Cal.Rptr. 740.) The court also held that the trial court could not define or otherwise limit an overlying owner's future unexercised groundwater rights, in contrast to this court's limitation of unexercised riparian rights. ( In re Waters of Long Valley Creek Stream System (1979) 25 Cal.3d 339, 358-359, 158 Cal.Rptr. 350, 599 P.2d 656 ( Long Valley ). [13] (The Wright court remanded the matter for reconsideration in light of Tulare, supra, 3 Cal.2d at page 525, 45 P.2d 972, which held that former article XIV, section 3 [now article X, section 2] of the California Constitution protected the reasonable beneficial uses of the riparian or overlying owner, whose water could be used by an appropriator only when that owner elected not to use it.) Contrary to respondents' contention, no appellate court has endorsed an equitable apportionment solution that disregards overlying owners' existing rights.