THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



303 



CALIFORNIA'S IRRIGATION PROBLEH 



Commonwealth That Has Greatest of Natural Facilities to Place It in the Front Rank of States Growing Irrigated 



Products Does Not Protect Its Farmers by the Enactment of Adequate Irrigation Laws, 



Thereby Jeopardizing Its Agricultural Welfare. 



By H. A. Crafts. 



No one conversant with existing conditions can for 

 a moment deny that agriculture is the most important 

 of California's varied industries. No one who has 

 looked over the situation, even with a casual eye, can 

 deny that California has developed that industry to a 

 marvelous degree. California stands today unique 

 among all the pastoral regions of the world. Yet when 

 the subject has been stripped of all its glittering gen- 

 eralities, and resolved into its practical phases, one 

 vital element stands out in bold relief. 



And that element is irrigation! Talk as we may, 

 agriculture in no part of the commonwealth is sus- 

 ceptible of its fullest development without the aid of 

 irrigation. 



Certain parts of the state, it is true, may have a 

 large average rainfall ; but so long as that rainfall is not 

 evenly distributed throughout the growing season what 

 does it avail in the maturing of crops? California has 

 a dry season in all that the term implies. What profits 

 it if the rainfall during the wet season does amount 

 to 20 or 30 or 40 inches, when, during the dry season, 

 it amounts to nothing at all ? 



If California generally was not one of the best 

 watered sections of the United States the situation 

 might seem discouraging. It is safe to say that if the 

 state's water supply could be evenly distributed there 

 would be sufficient annually to thoroughly irrigate every 

 arable acre of land within its boundaries. 



But before going into the subject of available water 

 supply, or constructive irrigation, the question of irri- 

 gation legislation should be considered, and considered 

 with a most profound regard for its paramount impor- 

 tance to the welfare of the state. 



An observer from abroad who is at all conversant 

 with the subject is surprised upon coming to California 

 and finding that the state, for some unaccountable 

 reason, has virtually stood aloof and refused to accord 

 to irrigation that care and protection that its vital 

 importance to the well being of the people should de- 

 mand. It is not that the California irrigation laws are 

 defective ; they are deficient. California's sin is not so 

 much one of commission as of omission. 



Some say that we have the Wright law, and therein 

 evince an ignorance both of the true nature of that 

 law and the needs of irrigation legislation in general. 

 If they will look into the matter they will find that the 

 Wright law does not affect the legal status of a water 

 right at all. It merely permits a community to mort- 

 gage itself for the construction and maintenance of an 

 irrigation system, or a plant, for its own common good. 

 An irrigation system constructed under the provisions 

 of the Wright law has the same legal standing with ref- 

 erence to the state, or to a competing irrigating system, 

 as any individual or corporate owner. Wright systems 

 have been made the subjects of litigation just the same 

 as others. Let a survey be taken of the great semi-arid 

 West, and California, the foremost in agriculture and 

 agricultural possibilities, appears to be the most de- 



ficient of all in laws intended to foster, to develop and 

 to protect irrigation. It seems in the beginning to 

 have neglected to perform one of its highest duties, and 

 then to have permitted the wrong to exist by a course 

 of easy-going procrastination. In the meantime the 

 evils growing out of this lapse of duty have gone on 

 from bad to worse, and have borne much bitter fruit. 

 The day of reckoning is yet to come, all the same, and 

 the sooner California turns her face sternly to the front 

 and sets her house to rights the better it will be for the 

 present as well as all future generations. 



In recounting the ills that have naturally flown 

 from this long neglect of a manifest public duty it 

 would seem hardly necessary to animadvert to the long 

 train of litigation that has not only depleted the pockets 

 and vexed the souls of scores of contestants, but has 

 himbered up the dockets of the civil courts, to the 

 hindrance and detriment of other legitimate and press- 

 ing matters and to the great cost of the taxpayers. It 

 is a matter of history and common repute, and will 

 long remain a blot upon the state's fair name and a 

 thorn in the side of the loyal citizen. It is stated upon 

 good authority that in two California counties alone 

 nearly two millions of dollars have been expended in 

 irrigation litigation. The state's conduct in the prem- 

 ises appears like the complete shifting of the burden of 

 the defining, establishing and maintaining of water 

 rights from its own shoulders to those of the courts; 

 when, instead, it should have codified, enacted and 

 placed upon the statute books the most perfect set of 

 irrigation laws that could be devised by human wisdom, 

 and left to the courts their mere interpretation on such 

 occasions as they might be brought into dispute. 



The statutes of 'California say that "the right to 

 the use of running water flowing in any river or stream 

 or down a canyon or ravine may be acquired by appro- 

 priation." 



That "a person desiring to appropriate water must 

 post a notice in writing in a conspicuous place at the 

 point of intended diversion." 



The notice is required to contain a statement of 

 the amount of water appropriated, the purpose for which 

 it is to be used, the means of diversion and size of 

 conduit. The law also says that a copy of this notice 

 must be recorded, within ten days of date of posting, 

 in the office of the recorder of the county in which it is 

 posted. 



This is the entire law governing the method of ap- 

 propriation and of recording of claims, upon which 

 property worth millions of dollars is based. It will be 

 observed that there is no provision for the exercise of 

 public authority over these appropriations, nor over the 

 diversion and distribution of water taken under them. 

 And still other sinister results have grown from this 

 dereliction of public duty. Many a meritorious irriga- 

 tion enterprise has been abandoned through actual or 

 threatened litigation. Immense sums of money in the 

 aggregate have either been lost or tied up in these 



