IRRIGATION 241 



all the water there needed. In case of large streams 

 still other canals can be built and eventually the public 

 can recognize through its laws and court decrees that 

 each party has a right to a certain amount of water. 



In case of successive years of small rainfall, there 

 might be water sufficient only for the needs of the 

 farmers along the canal first built. In this case, the 

 parties interested in the canals constructed at a later 

 date must properly give way and allow the water to be 

 used by the parties who made the first ditch, even though 

 it is further down the stream. In years when there is 

 not water enough for all, the proper division of the 

 available water is a difficult matter, and in many cases 

 laws have been designed .under which officials of the state 

 act in making an equitable division of water according 

 to the rights and needs of the several parties interested. 



While priority of right is thus recognized, it has been 

 found difficult to frame laws under which the rights of 

 all can be respected and the best interest of the largest 

 number served. The land which is available to irrigate 

 with any given supply of water is entered at different 

 times ; having been purchased or homesteaded from the 

 government or secured in other ways, as by grants to 

 railways, etc. The irrigation ditches are begun by the 

 government, by individuals and by corporations, who in 

 turn subdivide their lands by selling to individual own- 

 ers. The relations among promoters of irrigation ditches, 

 and between these and owners of the land, become very 

 complicated. The various states of the arid west have 

 enacted many laws to deal with these complicated con- 

 ditions. These laws have generally been made by piece- 

 meal and are sometimes aptly termed " patch quilts." 

 The decisions of courts in dealing with litigations in 

 individual cases have been numerous and often conflict- 

 ing. Thus, the network of legal relations concerning 

 many of the irrigation enterprises in the West are ex- 



