Court Opinion

ID: 9550897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:44:29.265612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:40.030757
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur, but I reiterate what I said in my concurring opinion in the case of Riordan v. Westwood, 115 Utah 215, 203 P. 2d 922, that all rain and snow water belongs to the public regardless of whose land it falls upon. Like all fugitive substances, it can belong to no one else except the public. As the main opinion suggests, this must have always been so. The State through the Legislature progressively extended to various categories of water, procedures for acquiring use rights and general regulations to these categories as set out in detail in the main opinion. But the fact that the State progressively applied regulation to the acquisition of use rights in water does not disturb the fundamental principle that all water, whether in the form of rain, snow or ice, at least from the time it reaches land within the confines of this state belongs to the public— the people of this state. The legislature when in § 100-1-1, R. S. U. 1933 and in the amendment now section 100-1-1, U. C. A. 1943, declared certain waters “to be the property of the public,” recognized a fact that had always been so. At this time we are not called upon to determine whether rain or snow reaching the ground belongs to the public before it touches the ground. We are not now confronted with any mechanical means of catching waters which drop from the heavens in quantity before they reach the earth and transporting them. But if scientific rain making will enable clouds to be moved from one locality to another and then disgorge their waters, we may see the time when the question of who owns the water in the clouds or, put another way, the clouds themselves may become important.
*406Order on Rehearing. May 2, 1952.
Upon consideration of the petition for rehearing heretofore filed herein and the arguments of counsel thereupon had, it is now ordered that the judgment of this court heretofore entered March 25, 1952 be, and the same is, amended by striking therefrom the award of costs to the appellants and substituting therefor no costs awarded to either party, and that the petition for rehearing be denied.