Court Opinion

ID: 9625183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:30:27.55848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:02.195333
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in part and dissent in part. Since the majority opinion permits the change of point of diversion and place and nature of use of the water, from a direct flow, beneficial winter use, to storage, I agree that any approval thereof should be 1) without impairment of vested rights and that 2) distribution should be administered, not by the litigants, as the lower court required, but by the State Engineer. On the other hand, besides believing we have adjudicated priorities and rights, as we have said we cannot do,1 I believe it impossible to administer the waters under the change allowed.
The applicants for this change of time and place of use, or their predecessors, were decreed rights under the Cox decree of 1936, which included 74 second feet of water to be used beneficially during the period from November 1 to March 31 annually. The rights under the decree were funneled into two categories: 1) direct flow and 2) storage rights all of which clearly were defined as to quality, quantity and time of use, the water not used beneficially to be returned to the stream. The applicants have no decreed storage rights, although the owners of the Sevier Bridge and Piute reservoirs have such rights. Applicants now seek to change their direct flow winter use rights to storage rights so as to be able to use the water, most of which ordinarily would course down the Sevier in the wintertime, whenever the applicants might need it, — be it the following summer, two summers hence; in 1965; or never; whether it be on their present lands, on 5,000 new acres; on both, or neither; whether in the Sevier watershed, some other watershed, or “by dumping it;” in the words of applicants’ counsel, “into the Colorado River.” To say, as has been said, that such a change of point of diversion, place and nature of use, does not modify the Cox decree simply is to blind oneself not only to reality but to the plain meaning of language.
It is difficult to read the main opinion and determine who won this case or how its terms and conditions can be complied with effectively. It appears that it requires the same amount of water to go down the river as would have gone down had the change been disallowed, which, of *186course, would be an amount of water less the amount applicants would have used beneficially during the 5 winter months, 74 second feet, or about 22,000 acre feet if they had used all the water to which they were entitled during those months, — with necessary adjustment made, of course, for return flow above the Kingston station. Calculating the water passing Kingston under this formula necessarily must include as a factor, that part of the 74 second feet decreed to applicants that they would have used during the current year but for the change in use. The State Engineer would be powerless to determine what that figure would be without asking the people who would have used the water but for the change. Those people testified at the trial that they beneficially used all of the winter water to which they were entitled during the 5-month winter period, and there is no reason to believe that, if asked by the State Engineer, they would state that they would have' used less during the current year, but for the change. Therefore, if the State Engineer uses 74 second feet as the amount of water that would have been used during the current year but for the change, it follows that the applicants could store and use beneficially the entire 74 second feet during the 5 months in question. Expert opinion, shared by this court in its language, discounted such use, and indicated that the full 74 second feet no doubt never were used beneficially, — the exact quantity of such water beneficially used being unknown and unmeasured to that date. Using such figure, — and it is impossible to determine what other figure the State Engineer could use, — probably would result in a loss by lower users of considerable quantity of water that previously flowed down the river and to which the main opinion says the lower users had vested rights. Such a result would seem inimicable to the Cox decree which Sevier users have relied upon for many years in determining their water rights.
It is suggested respectfully that other language of the main opinion could be interpreted, although inconsistently, to reach a result opposite to that mentioned herein-above. The opinion in substance says that measurement at Kingston must be accomplished by comparing the flow with that of a previous year having similar natural conditions, or strictly on a climatic basis, indicating, it would seem, that the factor of water beneficially used during the previous year, — an artificial condition or factor, — could not be taken into account in determining the daily volume required to flow past Kingston. Weight is further given to the idea that such factor should be excluded in the computations to be made when the court says that “no allowance can be made to plaintiffs for water which they might claim they would have used.” Eliminating such factor, it would seem that the water passing Kingston would not have to be the same quantity as came down in a previous year where water in an unknown quantity had been used beneficially by applicants, which never reached the Kingston *187station, but which nevertheless affected the quantity passing Kingston. It would follow, under such formula that the upper users would suffer and the lower users would be the beneficiaries, since the applicants would have to supply a quantity of their decreed water for flow past Kingston, which they would have beneficially used but are not going to use in the current year, and since they are not allowed, under the decision, to use that water as a factor in determining what must flow past Kingston. If the State Engineer used the same figure, 74 second feet, in calculating the flow under this formula, and it is difficult to determine what other figure he could use, the applicants actually would have to produce and send past Kingston, 74 second feet of water that they perhaps never would have used beneficially during the current year, — and if they had to send it down the river, they could not store it.
No matter how you approach this problem of measurement; it would seem impossible for the State Engineer to send down the Sevier, past Kingston, an amount of water that would, have gone down the river but for the change, because one of the factors that determines the amount of water that would have gone down the river but for the change, is the quantity of water that the applicants would have used beneficially during the 5 winter months, — a quantity that is determinable only by the statements and opinions of those who either have used the water beneficially in past years or would have used the zuater but for the change, there being no accurate records relating to quantity of water beneficially used in the .5 winter months in any past year, whether it was similar climatically to' the current year or not. The factor of quantity of water beneficially used in the past, or the factor of what quantity of water would have been used during the current year but for the change in use, cannot be ignored, cannot be calculated on past or present records or data, and cannot be estimated except by asking interested parties who already have set the figure at 74 second -feet by their testimony at the trial, which, as has been pointed out, the experts and this court, have discounted as being inaccurate.
The writer would hazard a. prediction that if, on the strength of this decision, the applicants build the dam at an expense running perhaps into seven figures, the many rights stemming from use of waters from this unique river system will be the fountainhead of limitless and bitter litigations. The dam, once completed, will have become a fait accompli, followed by a natural reluctance to disturb the then status quo, but the matter of vested rights will continue to echo through the Sevier basin.
The majority opinion takes considerable space and quotes at great length from various authorities to point out that lower “appropriators” have a right to have water come down the stream in volume and at times • it. customarily came down .before the *188appropriation. The writer believes such statements and the authorities cited are not pertinent here. This is a case of decreed rights, not one of appropriation as was the situation before the Cox decree. The applicants have 74 decreed second feet of winter water for beneficial use. If they use but SO second feet in one year, there is no reason to believe and the law does not establish that they have abandoned their rights to use the other 24 second feet in a later year. The 50 second feet may have been sufficient to raise a crop of potatoes, while the next year may require 74 second feet to produce a stand of thirstier alfalfa. So long as the applicants use all or any part of their decreed rights beneficially and within the time or season for which it was decreed, they can vary the amount of water used from year to year so long as they do not exceed the decreed maximum, without losing their rights and without conferring any rights, necessarily, upon lower users, to demand that all water decreed to upper users but not used in that year when the least amount was used shall thereafter be sent down the river to the lower users. The lower users merely benefit by failure of upper decreed right users to use all their decreed water in any particular year. To hold otherwise would seem to sterilize general adjudication decrees. For the reasons mentioned I cannot ascribe to the statements in the majority opinion to the effect that the same amount of water must pass Kingston after this change as would have passed under the same diversion system in operation prior to the change, when applicants were “irrigating the same land, supplying the same culinary water and growing the same kind of crops as was grown prior to the changes
The applicants, in urging approval of their application for change of diversion point, place and nature of use, point out that they might vary the amount used per season depending upon the thirstiness of the crop they plant, and they reason, therefore, that if they use less than the decreed amount they should be allowed to store what they could have used. This reasoning is fallacious since the less-consuming use, after all, is the use, and the beneficial use, and decreed water not beneficially used, under the Cox decree, must be returned to the stream, — not stored.
I am of the opinion that administration of the distribution of the water is a practical impossibility both under the facts reflected in the record, and under the terms and conditions of the majority opinion, and that counsel’s statement is significant in that respect when he says that “the flow of a river depends upon many factors, some of which are depth of snow cover; water content of snow; time incidences at which the seasons commence; abruptness or gradualness of temperature changes from season to season; absorptive qualities of the soil; wind factors; rain storms; rainfall infiltration runoff; and the extent to which, farmers along the river system deem it desirable to use their decreed rights.” His *189further statement seems equally significant when he said that “records of river yield at the Kingston Gaging Station kept for 40 years indicate that there has been no year in that whole period of time which can he considered to be similar to another year.”
Add to these variables the factor of quantity of water beneficially used during the winter months, — a factor unknown and indeterminable, as is the factor of quantity of water that would have been used but for the change in use, — a factor essential and necessary not only to devise but effectively to administer a formula which requires the same amount of water to pass-a designated point as would have passed there had the change of point of diversion, place and nature of use, been disallowed, and it would appear inescapable that it is not only impossible to divide the water accurately to insure a quantity equal to that which would have gone down the river but for the change, but it is impossible even to establish the formula itself.
Under such circumstances, to say, as does the majority opinion, that the “Plaintiffs’ proposed changes will not create an impossible administrative problem”, is to discount the judgment of the State Engineer, when he said the change would “impose an impossible problem of distribution,” and is to attribute to the State Engineer an omniscience quite out of harmony with the emoluments of his office, quite out of harmony with his own stated opinion, and quite out of harmony with our own decision which, while discounting his judgment, approves and insists on employing his judgment by appointing him arbiter and purveyor of the sensitive waters of the Sevier.
I am convinced that by our decision we have given none of the litigants a yardstick by which they can determine their rights under the Cox decree or under the now approved application for change of point of diversion, place and nature of use.
WORTHEN, J., not participating.

. U. S. v. District Court, Utah 1951, 238 P.2d 1132.