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rights. The essential things are that the hst must be complete and 

 that the rights must be accurately defined. In so far as they fall short 

 of this the basis for distribution is faulty. The laws of the various 

 States providing for the defining and acquiring of rights must be 

 judged by this standard — do they provide for a complete and accurate 

 list of all rights to water? 



The first laws looking to the provision of a list of rights were those 

 regarding the filing of copies of notices of claims with the county 

 officials. Such laws have been in existence in practically all of the 

 States. These have notoriously failed of their purpose, for the reason 

 that there was no limitation on what could be claimed and no record 

 of what was done by the claimant after the claim was filed. It has 

 always been a fundamental ])rinciple of irrigation law that a right to 

 water could be acquired only by diverting and using the water. A 

 record of claims, therefore, has no value as a record of rights. Up to 

 the present time no other provision for securing a record of rights as 

 they are acquired has been made in California, Montana, and Wash- 

 ington, except that in Montana a person having completed irrigation 

 works may file with the county a map and statement showing what 

 has been done. 



A second step was a provision for the filing of claims with the State 

 engineer, as well as with the county officials, the purpose being to 

 have n one place a complete record of all claims within the State. 

 This provision has also failed. This is the present system in Colorado 

 and Oregon. Under these laws there was no provision for determin- 

 ing what rights had been acquired, the rights remaining undefined 

 until they were brought before the courts in suits between rival claim- 

 ants to the same source. In such suits only the rights of the parties 

 to the suits would be defined, the complete defining of the rights of all 

 parties on a single stream under this system requiring an infinite 

 number of suits. To prevent this most of the States have since 

 adopted a provision that in any suit regarding water rights all persons 

 claiming rights to water from the same source may be made parties 

 to the action. Colorado has gone further and provided a special pro- 

 cedure to be followed by the courts for defining rights. This system 

 avoids the multiplicity of suits, but it makes no provision for a com- 

 plete list of rights, as no adjudication will take place until conflict has 

 arisen. While this is a serious defect this system has been criticised 

 more severely on the ground of inaccuracy in defining rights. This 

 has been especially true of the operation of the law in Colorado. In 

 that State there is no provision for expert advice as to capacity of 

 ditches, which is usually determined from the testimony of the inter- 

 ested parties. This has resulted in decrees confirming to claimants 

 rights to many times as much water as they had ever used or their 

 ditches would carry, and these decrees have been the source of some 



