Court Opinion

ID: 9551218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:49:25.348498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:20.321853
License: Public Domain

ROONEY, Justice,
specially concurring, with whom CARDINE, Justice, joins.
Although I believe appellee has the standing required to institute abandonment proceedings, I do not agree with the reasoning by which the majority opinion finds such standing. The majority opinion does so because there is a “threat of resuscitation,” thus causing injury to appellee’s
“water rights — i.e., the right to have the abandoned water flow by the Lake Hattie diversion, to aid in the satisfaction of Wheatland’s long-standing but unfulfilled reservoir rights— ⅜ *
My disagreement with this reasoning is twofold:
1. Appellee’s water rights do not encompass appellee’s right to use appellant’s abandoned water until the abandonment is adjudicated. Section 41-3-401, W.S.1977,1 states that, when conditions for an abandonment occur, the water right is “considered” to be abandoned, but it then speaks of the procedure for “legal declaration of abandonment” and of notice to holders of water rights “sought to be abandoned,” and a hearing to determine the fact of abandonment. The very fact that abandonment proceedings can be forestalled after the five-year interval by reactivating (resuscitating) its use evidences the continued existence of the right until adjudication of abandonment. Wheatland Irrigation District v. Laramie Rivers Company, Wyo., 659 P.2d 561 (1983); Wheatland Irrigation District v. Pioneer Canal Co., Wyo., 464 P.2d 533 (1970); Sturgeon v. Brooks, 73 Wyo. 436, 281 P.2d 675 (1955); Horse Creek Conservation Dist. v. Lincoln Land Co., 54 Wyo. 320, 92 P.2d 572 (1939).
2. The “threat” of reactivation (resuscitation) is present on the day after the five successive years of nonuse. To say that it triggers standing is redundant. The standing occurs without any “threat” as soon as the five years elapse if the other requirements for standing are present.
I find standing on the part of appellee from the facts that (1) the five successive years of nonuse had elapsed when the abandonment proceedings were instituted, (2) appellee presented the matter to the Board of Control in a timely fashion, and (3) appellee was a water user who “might be affected” by a declaration of abandonment of appellant’s water rights. Appellee is a junior appropriator to appellant, and appellee’s rights have regularly not been fulfilled.
The parties and the majority seem to have trouble with the existence of the requirement that appellee water user “might be affected” in view of some of our holdings. I do not. I do not believe that we have changed the historic position on this point. Before explaining my understanding of the law as set forth in previous holdings of this court, some concerns *38should be noted which form a background for our efforts to reach a just and fair conclusion in such cases.
The decision in State of Nebraska v. State of Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589, 65 S.Ct. 1332, 89 L.Ed. 1815 (1945), as it pertains to abandonment actions, must be kept in mind. The water involved in an abandonment must be shown to be useable under another adjudication. A new lawsuit with another state as a result of changes since 1945 may not be to the benefit of this state.
The Board of Control has the duty to regulate and administer the use of the state’s water. It can bring an abandonment action in its own right. Substantive rights of citizens should not be lost because of failure to properly administer to the several water rights. The courts cannot make legal the “stealing” of water beyond one’s water rights or the misapplication of a water right.
Finally, a specific concern with standing in abandonment proceedings can be illustrated: A’s water right is prior to B’s water right; B’s is prior to C’s; C’s is prior to D’s; and D’s is prior to E’s. Each has a right to ten cubic feet per second from the stream. There is normally only thirty-five cubic feet per second (including return flow, etc.) for supply in the stream. B does not use five cubic feet per second for five consecutive years. Our holdings have refused to find A sufficiently “affected” to bring abandonment against B. He gets his water first. Whether or not B takes his full allotment does not “affect” A’s water right. Although C’s water right is junior to B’s, his appropriation is not normally affected since he has a call on ten cubic feet per second of water in a thirty-five cubic feet per second stream with only a twenty cubic feet per second call ahead of him. Our holdings would have him carry the burden of showing an effect on him of the abandonment. The burden would be much easier for D, and since E can definitely show an unfulfilled appropriation, his standing would be apparent.
The parties and the majority concern themselves with the use of the words “injury” and “benefit” as they pertain to the word “affected” in § 41-3-401, W.S.1977 (see fn. 1). Although “injury” and “benefit” are not synonymous, they mean the same thing as far as result is concerned in the context of their use and of the use of the word “affected” in the statute. When one would be benefited by the abandonment of a water right under the statute, he would be injured if the right is reactivated and not abandoned. Conversely, if one would be injured by failure to abandon a water right, whereby it is reactivated, he would be benefited by the abandonment. It makes no difference whether the result is described as “might be affected” or as “might be benefited” or as “might be injured.” 2
The facts of recent cases have caused language therein to emphasize the injury aspect of the abandonment on the conte-stor, but the thrust of the holding in such cases has been directed more at the word “might” in the phrase “might be affected,” and such holdings simply require that the injury or benefit be direct and not speculative or probable. Almost anyone making any use of water in the state of Wyoming *39“might” be “affected,” “injured” or “benefited” in some way by an abandonment of a water right. Our holdings limit the availability of the abandonment procedure to those to be directly affected by the result.
In Platte County Grazing Association v. State Board of Control, Wyo., 675 P.2d 1279 (1984), the petitioners in abandonment proceedings were junior in appropriation to the respondents. The petitioners failed to show a direct injury to their water rights if the petition was not granted, i.e., they failed to show a direct benefit if the petition was granted. The failure to make a similar showing by the junior appropriator existed in Budd v. Bishop, Wyo., 543 P.2d 368 (1975), although the primary concern was the constitutionality of the surplus water legislation. Cremer v. State Board of Control, Wyo., 675 P.2d 250 (1984) also concerned the surplus water legislation and the effect it had on the appropriation date of the water right to which the surplus water right was appurtenant. We held that A, with an appropriation senior to B, could not use his statutory surplus water right of March 1, 1945, to establish a junior position as to B for the purpose of an abandonment proceeding. Again, we found any injury or benefit to the senior appropriator to be other than direct. And we recognized the surplus water legislation to concern surplus water3, and its relationship to the result of the holding in State of Nebraska v. State of Wyoming, supra. We concluded at pages 257-258 of Cremer v. State Board of Control, supra:
“We hold, then, that the surplus water law does not authorize its utilization for the purpose of bestowing junior appropriator standing upon a base right senior appropriator such as Schmid, Inc. in order that such senior appropriator may establish that he is ‘affected’ within the purview of the abandonment statute. This holding contemplates these propositions: First, the base and surplus water rights of Schmid, Inc. are not being abridged by the appellants’ utilization of the water contemplated by their corresponding appropriations. Secondly, it would be necessary to abandon the appellants’ base rights in order to effect abandonment of their surplus water rights, and the surplus water law (§ 41-4-324, supra) prohibits its utilization for the purpose of taking or diverting other than surplus water.”
In short, I find nothing in our previous opinions inconsistent with the basis set forth above and upon which I concur with the result reached by the majority opinion. Appellee was a junior appropriator to the water user against which the abandonment proceedings were instituted. Appellee’s appropriation has not been fulfilled. Thus, he can show a direct injury should his abandonment petition be denied, or, said another way, he can show a direct benefit if the petition is granted.

. Section 41-3-401, W.S.1977, read in pertinent part, as of the time controlling this case, as follows:
"(a) Where the holder of an appropriation of water from a surface, underground or reservoir water source fails, either intentionally or unintentionally, to use the water therefrom for the beneficial purposes for which it was appropriated, whether under an adjudicated or unadjudicated right, during any five (5) successive years, he is considered as having abandoned the water right and shall forfeit all water rights and privileges appurtenant thereto. * * *
"(b) When any water user who might be affected by a declaration of abandonment of
existing water rights, desires to bring about a legal declaration of abandonment, he shall present his case in writing to the state board of control. The board has exclusive original jurisdiction in water right abandonment proceedings. The board shall, if the facts so justify, refer the matter to the superintendent of the water division where the abandonment is claimed to have occurred. The total absence of water to divert during an irrigation season precludes the inclusion of any such period of nonuse resulting therefrom in the computation of the successive five (5) year period.”

. Section 41-3-401(b), W.S.1977 (fn. 1) was amended, effective May 23, 1985, to change (among other things) the language from "when any water user who might be affected by a declaration of abandonment" to "when any water user who might be benefitted by a declaration of abandonment * * * or who might be injured by the reactivation of the water right,” and the amendment also added the following to the subsection:
"(b) * * * The following persons have standing to petition the state board of control to declare the abandonment of existing water rights under this section:
"(i) Any person who has a valid adjudicated water right or is the holder of a valid permit from the same source of supply which is equal to or junior in date of priority to the right for which abandonment is sought; or
“(ii) The holder of a valid water right entitled to surplus water under W.S. 41-4-318 through 41-4-324, petitioning to abandon a water right from the same source of supply if the right sought to be abandoned has a priority date of March 1, 1945, or earlier."
That said in this dissent is not advisory with reference to the consistency and constitutionality of § 41 — 3—401(b)(i) and (ii), W.S.1977 (Cum. Supp.1985).

. The establishment of a surplus water right by the legislature in 1945 concerned water in a drainage system which is
" * * * at any time in excess of the total amount required to furnish to all existing appropriations from said stream system the maximum amount of water for which all said appropriations have been granted, whether by permit or by adjudicated decree as of March 1, 1945.” § 41-4-318, W.S.1977.
It granted a surplus water right to the extent of one cubic foot per second for each seventy acres to lands having pre-March 1, 1945 water rights.