90 



ownership of ditches for the sale of water, and irrigation districts 

 are being organized to buy out the ditches, and a bill providing that 

 such districts might condemn the ditches watering the lands of the 

 districts was introduced in the Nebraska legislature in 1905, but was 

 not enacted. 



Although there are few companies selling or renting water in the 

 Platte valleys, there is an indeterminate amount of such traffic by 

 individuals owning stock in ditch companies. The prevailing form 

 of ditch company is the stock company, the stock entitling its holder 

 to a share of whatever water the ditch furnishes. The stock of these 

 companies may be bought and sold, and the water used on any land 

 which can be reached by the ditches. The expenses of maintenance 

 and operation are usually met by assessments on the stock, and the 

 companies neither sell nor rent water, and consequently have no rates 

 which can be regulated. The individual stockholders sell or rent 

 their stock, and the rentals do not come within the provisions of the 

 Colorado law. This practice is not uncommon, and in the North 

 Platte Valley in Nebraska promoters of a sugar factory have 

 secured control of several ditches by buying a majority of their 

 stock. In Nebraska, however, stock ditch companies cover ex- 

 penses by charging for water" rather than by assessments on stock, 

 and it may be that these charges would be subject to regulation by 

 law. If not, these promoters, owning a majority of the stock of the 

 companies, can regulate charges to suit themselves. In fact, the claim 

 that they can do this is used to bear the price of land to aid them in 

 buying it up. To be effective, therefore, in preventing extortion, the 

 JaAvs relating to the fixing of rates must be extended to control rentals 

 of ditch stock in Colorado and rates charged for water in Nebraska 

 by companies originally organized to supply water to their stock- 

 holders, the stock of which has passed out of the hands of the water 

 users. 



BENEFICIAL, USE. 



AMiere rights to water are acquired by appropriation, the appropria- 

 tion must be for beneficial use, and, logically, the rights are limited 

 by the beneficial use made. Under the doctrine of priority the party 

 having made a beneficial use of Avater is entitled to continue that use 

 as against anyone having subsequently taken water from the same 

 source. Abstract justice to the subsequent appropriator requires 

 that the use of water by the prior a]3propriator be such as to maintain 

 conditions as they were at the time the subsequent appropriation 

 was made, in so far as any change in conditions would affect the 

 continuation of the use to which the water had been put by the later 



a Enterprise Company v. Moffitt, 58 Nebr., 642. 



