IRRIGATION PRINCIPLES.* 



II. ASSOCIATION. IRRIGATION DISTRICTS. 

 BY WM. HAM. HALL, MEM. AM. SOC. C. E. 



THE idea of association in the development of 

 irrigation industry naturally follows upon that 

 of the common ownership of waters. Just as 

 administrative control of streams and regulation of 

 diversions therefrom has been erected as the frame- 

 work of water-rights systems in civil law countries, 

 so has the local association of irrigators for the con- 

 trol and promotion of irrigation development within 

 unified areas (districts) of the common ownership of 

 waters, been made the foundation of laws and regula- 

 tions intended to foster and encourage irrigation 

 enterprise. 



The three ideas, logically, are bound together. 

 Action upon them, rationally, must be harmonious. 

 The waters belong, in common, to all the people. As 

 a common property, in which all have an interest, 

 they must be protected from unlicensed or unregu- 

 lated taking by any. The government is the natural 

 guardian of the people's stock of common property. 

 As a common property the local use of waters should 

 be in the hands of those of their owners who can to 

 advantage be associated together at any locality for 

 such use. If there ever was a reason for making 

 waters a common property of the people, there is 

 equally a reason for making their use a communal 

 use, and their control a community control in such 

 use. There is no reason, in the public interest, for 

 suffering the control of the common property neces- 

 sary for the community use to go into private hands. 

 There are the best possible reasons why the people 

 should associate, locally, and exercise that control. 

 Such is the civil law logic. 



How different the outcome of the other fundamental 

 principle that of the common law : The argument is 

 that waters are public property.and are an integral part 

 of streams. The people have no proprietary interest 

 in them, except as part of streams, and except, indi- 

 rectly, as they, the people, constitute the public. 

 Riparian proprietors have a usufructuary right in 

 streams: they own the land enclosing them; are, more 

 than any others, interested in their preservation; and, 

 hence, are their natural guardians. The government 

 ought not to interfere with the natural rights of 

 riparian proprietors by attempting to administer 

 streams. If those who have the most interest in streams 

 theriparian proprietors do not object in the courts, 

 waters, being of that species of public property which 

 may be appropriated to private possession and con- 

 trol, may be taken out of streams by any one who has 

 the money and the enterprise so to do. Theie may be 

 associations of irrigators for this purpose, but that is 

 a point of private desire or taste. The public welfare 

 is in no way concerned. The public's interest is in 

 the streams. If waters may be removed from them at 

 all, the public's interest in those waters ceases. The 

 people at large have no interest in the waters separ- 

 ate from the streams. From the public standpoint, 

 what matters it under what organization waters are 

 used, so long as they are usefully employed ? "What 

 fundamental reason is there for prescribing condi- 

 tions, forms of control, or getting up local organiza- 

 tions for using water appropriated, taken away, from 

 a stream ? The people to be served in irrigation have 

 no primary right to the waters. Their interest in 

 them was indirect, through the body politic, the 

 public ; and this interest in them was as part of the 



*A11 rights reserved by the author. 



252 



stream, and not in them as waters a separate, com- 

 mon property. The waters are public property sub- 

 ject to appropriation. Let him who appropriates them 

 use them. To all intents and purposes they are his. 

 Such is the common law logic. 



Under the civil law principle of the common owner- 

 ship of waters as a separate property from streams, 

 there is, fundamentally, a reason for administrative 

 control of streams as the reservoirs of this common 

 stock, and for the local association of irrigators for 

 control of utilization thereof, when removed from the 

 streams of any locality. Under the common law prin- 

 ciples of public ownership of streams and waters, in 

 one, and private rights in streams, this fundamental 

 reason for the presence of these two corner stones of 

 good irrigation system is absent; and so they them- 

 selves are left out. It is only when the abuses, which 

 their absence permits, show themselves, that the 

 people of common law countries awaken to the public 

 necessity and demand the civil law institutions of 

 stream protection and association for control of water 

 utilizations. This is not alone the case with respect 

 to irrigation, but to every interest and industry affect- 

 ing streams or affected by their waters. 



The civil law principles of common ownership of 

 waters by the people and local association to control 

 their use, come from the Roman communal idea of 

 settlement and local management of industrial affairs 

 in the interest of the community. The antagonistic 

 principle which shapes the common law doctrine of 

 streams and waters, comes from the feudal system of 

 local government by petty lords in each neighbor- 

 hood all the people being his vassals, all the land and 

 water, his fief. To him has now succeeded the 

 " public'' that indefinite being which needs no pro- 

 tection of its interests in its own estimation until after 

 it has been robbed of its rights. 



The Roman communal system of town organiza- 

 tion, as an institution, was developed in the course of 

 the colonization of new provinces. It embodied the 

 germs of the modern district or association, in that it 

 provided for the local administration of community 

 property, or property held in common for all the 

 people of the settlement. Such were the waters of 

 streams and irrigation ditches and other works. All 

 of southern Europe, including Spain and southern 

 France as well as Italy, received this system under 

 Roman rule. But the feudal system succeeding it, 

 was antagonistic to this communal form of organiza- 

 tion and property holding, and, later, spreading 

 throughout those countries, most everywhere swept 

 away the community properties of the towns and the 

 Roman form of town (district) government. In Spain, 

 however, notwithstanding the supremacy of the Goths 

 and the subsequent long occupation of the country by 

 the Moors, the communal right, especially as applied 

 to irrigation works and waters, survived, and follow- 

 ing Spanish precedents and examples came the more 

 modern forms of community organization as applied 

 to irrigation districts in other countries. 



IRRIGATION COMMUNITIES IN SPAIN. 



Spain is the country Par excellence of association 

 in irrigation. By far the greater area of irrigation and 

 number of irrigation works in that country have been 

 under control of associations of small landowners 



