Court Opinion

ID: 9639998
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:54:52.386271+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:24.928166
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Under the doctrine of prior appropriation and application to beneficial use of water for irrigation, three types of property arise. The first is the property right in the flow or use of water, known as the usufructuary, or water right, which is the right to divert water from a natural stream by artificial means and apply it to beneficial use. It is real property and is appurtenant to the land upon which the water is applied to beneficial use. The second is the property right in the physical works by which the water is diverted, stored, and delivered to the land on which it is beneficially used. Such works are real property. The right-of-way upon which they rest is an easement and an incorporeal hereditament. The third is captured water, which, when captured by one having the right to appropriate it, is personal property of the taker. See Murphy v. Kerr, D.C.N.M., 296 F. 536, and cases there cited.
Here, the Farmers Reservoir and Irrigation Company, hereinafter called the Farmers Company, is a mutual ditch company organized not for profit, but for the convenience of its members. While it holds the legal title to the physical works by which waters are diverted, impounded, and carried, it holds such title as trustee for its members, who own the beneficial title to the physical works and the water rights appurtenant to their land.1 The Farmers Company is, in substance, a mutual agency of the owners of the water rights, created to divert, store, and carry water to the lands to which such rights are appurtenant. Its employees are, in substance, the employees of the landowners. Their compensation is paid from assessments paid by the landowners. The Farmers Company makes no profit. It owns the beneficial title to no property. It is nothing more than a mutual, agency organized for the convenience of the owners of land and appurtenant water rights. It is in no sense an independently operated irrigation corporation.
In the semi-arid regions of the west, irrigation is essential to the production of crops. The application of water for irrigation is just as essential as the preparation of the seed-bed, the sowing and planting, the cultivation, and the harvesting. One who performs services in carrying water from its sou.rce to the lands on which it is beneficially applied, performs a service just as essential and important in the production of crops as one who prepares the seed-bed, sows or plants, cultivates, or harvests.
In the case of Big Wood Canal Co. v. Unemployment Comp. Division, 61 Idaho 247, 100 P.2d 49, 50, the Supreme Court of Idaho passed on the question of whether employees of the Big Wood Canal Company, a mutual nonprofit organization, engaged in the maintenance of the physical works and the diversion, storage, and carrying of water for irrigation purposes to the lands to which the water rights were appurtenant, came within the phrase “agricultural labor,” as used in the Unemployment Compensation Act of Idaho. The court, speaking through the late Justice Ailshie, for many years a distinguished member of that court, said:
“It is just as essential to have canals, ditches, flumes, and laterals for the de*917livery of water to the land, as it is to have the land in order to grow crops. The land must be cleared and prepared and the water must be captured, impounded, delivered, and distributed over the land; and when that is done, with proper cultivation, crops may be confidently expected. Irrigating the land is as much ‘agricultural labor’ as is the plowing, grading, and cultivating the land after it is cleared of the sagebrush and greasewood. In the arid regions of the west, water is the vitalizing element of agriculture. The waters delivered by the Big Wood Canal Co. were impounded solely for agricultural purposes and the whole volume so impounded and delivered was appurtenant to the farms, I.C.A., sec. 41-1725, cultivated by the farmers who own the land and hold the water certificates.
“The fact, that the reservoirs or impounding works are many miles distant from the farms to which the water belongs and is delivered through intervening canals, renders the labor necessary for its storage and delivery no less ‘agricultural labor.’ The farmer who goes to the warehouse 20 miles away for a load of fertilizer, or a load of seed, does not by those acts lose his character or designation as a farmer or one engaged in ‘agricultural labor.’ The fact, that the Big Wood Canal Co. employs and pays the men who tend and maintain the reservoirs and canals, and measure and deliver the water to the farmers, renders them no less laborers in the interest and field of agriculture, since the entire maintenance and operating expense is charged up to and prorated among the various farms and tracts of land to which the water is delivered as an appurtenance. See I.C.A., secs. 41-901, 41-101; Taylor v. Hulett, 15 Idaho 265, 97 P. 37, 19 L.R.A.,N.S., 535, 538; Sanderson v. Salmon River Canal Co., 45 Idaho 244, 270, 263 P. 32. The Big Wood Canal Co. is not a profit-making corporation; it is merely a medium or instrumentality created to represent the farmers owning water rights from the reservoirs and is doing for them what each one can not do alone for himself.”
Here, as in the Idaho case, all of the water is exclusively used for agricultural purposes.
I think there could be little doubt that an employee of a farmer engaged in transporting fertilizer from a source of supply to the farm, or engaged in transporting seed from a source of supply to the farm, would be engaged in agriculture. Here, as I have indicated, I think the employees of the ditch company are, in substance, the employees of the farmers. They, likewise, are engaged in transporting water from its source to the farms, and are performing a service of imperative necessity to the production of crops on the farms.
The original Social Security Act, 49 Stat. 620, 625, in excluding agricultural labor from the term “employment” in § 210(b) of the Act, did not define the phrase “agricultural labor.” Later, because of administrative rulings, Congress amended the Act by providing that it should include services performed “in connection with the operation or maintenance of ditches, canals, reservoirs, or waterways used exclusively for supply and storing water for farming purposes.” 53 Stat. 1373, 42 U.S.C.A. § 409 W (3).
That action by Congress, it seems to me, throws some light on its intent with respect to the term “agriculture” used in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Reynolds v. Salt River Valley Water Users Ass’n, 9 Cir., 143 F.2d- 863, seems to me to be clearly distinguishable on the facts. There, the Association operated a water and electric system for the supplying of irrigation water and power in Central Arizona. Its system consisted of 5 large storage dams, 2 diversion dams, 8 hydroelectric plants, 1 steam plant, 1 Diesel plant, 1,400 miles of canals and laterals, hundreds of miles of power lines, 200 deep well pumps, and other plants and equipment necessary for the operation of a water and electric utility. It had an investment of $2,300,000 in power plants. Its employees, in addition to supplying water to farmers, were engaged in the production and transportation of electric energy for industrial purposes for profit. It was a profit-making corporation and engaged in the production and transportation of electric energy as well as in the diversion, storage, and carrying of water. Here, we have a mutual *918ditch company engaged, as an instrumentality of the landowners, in the maintenance and operation of ditches, canals, and reservoirs used exclusively for diverting, storing, and supplying water for agricultural purposes.
It is my opinion that the employees of the ditch company here involved, other than the bookkeeper, were engaged in practices “performed by a farmer * * * as an incident to or in conjunction with” farming operations and were within the meaning of the term “agriculture,” as defined in 29 U.S.C.A. § 203(f), and were exempted from the coverage of the Act by 29 U.S.C. A. § 213(a) (6).
For the reasons indicated, I respectfully dissent.

 Comstock v. Olney Springs Drainage Dist., 97 Colo. 416, 50 P.2d 531, 532; Beaty v. Board of County Com’rs of Otero County, 101 Colo. 346, 73 P.2d 982, 985; Kendrick v. Twin Lakes Reservoir Co., 58 Colo. 281, 144 P. 884; Ire-ton v. Idaho Irr. Co., 30 Idaho 310, 164 P. 687; Pacific States Savings & Loan Corp. v. Schmitt, 9 Cir., 103 F.2d 1002, 1004.